The Ghost in the Machine…
Intelligence is not Computation
“The dogma of the Ghost in the Machine … maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements” …
– Gilbert Ryle
“The most dangerous world views are the world views of those who have never viewed the world” …
— Alexander von Humboldt
“The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief we are inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts” …
— Charles Sanders Peirce
The recent post — Resolving the Quantum Paradox -Beyond Bohr: Rethinking the Copenhagen Interpretation — The Mediation of Meaning from Being in the World to Generalisations and Universal Abstractions of the Human Mind - posed an important question regarding the nature of Intelligence.
Rather than intelligence being computational, is intelligence anchored in the conscious mediation, interpretation, transformation and adaption of meaning where meaning (Peirce) emerges from Being in the World (Heidegger) and the relationship of this Being (Dasein) to Being (Sein) (Heidegger)?
In other words, is intelligence fundamentally existential (i.e. act of Being (Plato)) and interpretive (i.e. emergence of meaning (Peirce)) through the relationship of this Being (Dasein) to Being (Sein) (Heidegger) rather than computational (i.e. algorithmic processing of symbols based on syntax) ?
If so, can the crisis of modernity and its increasingly Kafkaesque post-truth implications for Western Civilisation becoming trapped in the cul de sac of post-modernity be traced back to the birth of the Age of Reason?
Literally, the emergence of Temples of Reason and the Cult of Reason.
“The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once”…
– Rene Descartes
A mental structure view of Reality anchored in the Primacy of Human Consciousness (e.g. Cartesianism, Perspectivism, Egocentrism, Subjectivism, Nominalism, Idealism) and the Primacy of Man (e.g. Modern Gnosticism, Marxism, Transhumanism, Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism).
If we are to escape the crisis of Modernity, we must first recognise the water we are swimming in and the philosophical ideas that have increasingly been embraced (e.g. cartesianism, nominalism, gnosticism & marxism).
Embracing the possibility of reviving the rich history of Western Civilisation intellectual thought (e.g. Aristotle, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Bacon, Kant, Peirce etc).
Recognising the essence of technology (Heidegger) as a mirror of illumination of Human Being and the relational nature of meaning, being and knowing that are all central to our understanding of intelligence.
Cartesianism, Age of Reason and Dualism
“Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem”…
— John Searle
As outlined in The Semiotics of Life — Consciousness and Beings relationship to Being, Cartesianism philosophy was central to the emergence of the Age of Reason.
“For the technical spirit, the world is a machine whose operation leaves a great deal to be desired, due to defects and errors for which nobody is to blame because nobody is there” …
– Augusto del Noce
Through the application of Liebniz Law ( Identity of Indiscernibles), Descartes distinguished between res Cogitans (Mind — for example — Idealism and Phenomenology ) and res Extensa (Matter — for example — Materialism and Body).
Cartesian Dualism reflects this distinction (i.e. Difference — A is not B — Mind is not Body); however, how these two different types of Being interact remained unclear.
How are human mechanical sensations transformed into human thought?
Cartesian Philosophy was certain of Human Consciousness and Cognition (i.e.Descartes — “I think, therefore I am” ) and how ideas & concepts and systems of logic provided the abstract tools of the human mind, however, it was less clear has to how these ideas and concepts reflected an external Reality if they are produced within ourselves?
Note: Are the following examples of Cartesianism that increasingly resulted in ontological philosophical errors and category mistakes?
Refer — Are Cells really machines? [ LINK ]
Refer — Are Humans really programmable software? [ LINK ]
Refer — Is your Mind really a mechanical machine? [ LINK ] or a Computer? [ LINK ] [LINK]
Refer — Is the Natural World really a mechanical machine? [ LINK ]
Refer — Is the Human Body really a mechanical machine? [ LINK ]
Refer — Can Intelligence really be Artificial? [ LINK ]
“Integral reality is the world’s transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of the truth of the world and of man and of all that transluces both”…
— Jean Gebser
Peircianism, Age of Meaning and Monism
“But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
In contrast, Charles Sanders Peirce — Semiotic Triadic & Pragmatic Maxim — addresses the unanswered questions of Cartesianism through the prism of Semiotics.
Rather than embrace a mechanistic world view, Peirce instead viewed the World in a monistic way (i.e. in contrast to dualism).
Our Minds & Bodies are entangled, and Human Being is entangled with Being.
It is through the interplay between Presence (i.e. Human Being participates in Reality — Human Beings participation in Being — A is in B and B is in A — Mother Nature & Hegel’s Second Nature — a Unity — a Continuum — Presence) and Difference (i.e. Mind Dependent Representation of a Mind Independent Reality — A is not B — Liebniz Law — — a Distinction — Presence & Absence) that Human’s can bring an understanding of Being to the Human Mind.
In Peirce’s system, Being and Knowing are co-constitutive — they emerge together through the triadic of consciousness (Primisense-Altersense-Medisense) and categorical relationships (Firstness–Secondness–Thirdness) and our embodied Being in the World (i.e. the relation of this Being (Dasein) to Being (Sein) and emergence of Meaning).
The ramifications of reordering of this hierarchy (Order of Things) — the pivotal role of Semiotics & Being to disciplines of Knowledge and Intelligence — are profound.
The Ghost in the Machine — Gilbert Ryle’s Critique of Dualism
“Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man”…
― Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind
“Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphisation of the machine but the mechanisation of the human. The founding fathers of cybernetics — some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts — intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter”…
Refer — On the Origins of Cognitive Science: The Mechanisation of the Mind — Jean-Pierre Dupuy [ LINK ]
The Ghost in the Machine is a philosophical phrase originally coined by Gilbert Ryle in his 1949 book The Concept of Mind.
It was intended as a critique of Cartesian dualism**** — the idea proposed by René Descartes that the mind and body are two fundamentally different substances: res Cogitans: the non-physical mind and res Extensa: the physical body.
Ryle viewed Descartes’ claim — that the mind is a separate, non-physical entity inhabiting the body — as a category mistake and philosophical illusion.
The term Ghost in the Machine was intended to describe the absurdity of the notion that there is a non-physical consciousness (a ghost) somehow operating within a physical body (the machine).
Ryle’s critique was influential in shifting the philosophy of mind away from introspection and metaphysics and toward a focus on observable language and behavior — a more embodied perspective of the mind and body.
[ **** Note — In contrast to substance dualism, property dualism (i.e. physical properties (e.g. mass, force, etc) and mental properties (e.g. subjective experiences, qualia, other aspects of consciousness, etc) continue to be defended by several contemporary philosophers. In other words, substances may have physical and non-physical properties akin to Aristotle's ideas (i.e. substances include essence, form and matter). It recognises the challenges and issues raised by embracing a single material world perspective to solve the Mind-Body problem ( i.e. consciousness and cognition in a World explained through physical laws), phenomelogical aspects of consciousness (i.e. subject experiences (umwelt) and qualia), and mental causation (i.e. role of beliefs and desires in shaping physical outcomes and actions). It is also a recognition of some of Descartes' key axioms (assumptions) relating to relationships between Ontology, Epistemology and Semantics — all three are categories of human thought — Aristotle, Kant & Peirce]
Heidegger’s inquiry into our relationship with Technology: Enframing and the danger of Abstraction (i.e. Limits to Logic) — Kant’s critique of Pure Reason and Descartes’ Cartesian Dualism
“Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians”…
— Jacques Ellul
“The essence of technology is by no means anything technological”…
– Martin Heidegger
Monism and the Metaxic Triadic Nature of Human Beings
Before exploring how Heidegger’s insights about how the nature of Technology illuminates the eternal nature of the Human Condition, it is important to revisit foundational concepts and ideas relating to Human Being from leading Western Civilisation philosophy intellectuals.
The Metaxic (Plato & Voegelin) & Triadic nature (Rosmini) of Human Being and how this Unity of Being participates in Reality (i.e. everything in the act of Being) and is shaped by a Divine Order (e.g. Thomism Philosophy).
In Entanglement, Emergence, Being in the World and Divine Order — Physical Entanglement, Conscious Entanglement and Moral Entanglement, the unique Metaxic nature of Human Being was explored.
A Monism where Humans are entangled in the world (i.e. Being in the World — Heidegger) and where the Unity of Human Being can also be understood in a compositional way through the concept of a formal distinction (John Duns Scotus).
A formal distinction between Rosmini’s three modes of Being — Real Being, Ideal Being and Moral Being — that are all encapsulated into an inseparable Unity of Being.
Each of these modes of being is distinct and different, but they are inseparable and entangled aspects of a single human being.
They are different ways of understanding and engaging with the same underlying reality, but they are not independent substances that can be entirely separated, nor do they exist only in the mind.
The ongoing mediation of Being (enabled via consciousness ) between the :
- relationship of substances (Aristotle — essence, matter & form — primary mode of Being);
- intelligence (Peirce — meanings mediation of ontology and epistemology — a dynamic process part biological (embodied), part logical (abstract) and part participatory in Being (Being in the World — Observer & Observed mediated via Signs ); and
- a Divine Order (Rosmini & Kant — where morals, ethics and values enables a self-reflection of Pure Reason (reine Vernunft) to a refined Ethical Practical Form of Reason**** — praktische Vernunft
[ **** Note — Kant’s critique of Pure Reason recognised the need to go beyond a proto-phenomonological understanding (i.e. experience is structured by the subject) of Reason (Verstand) and beyond the speculative functional elements of Pure Reason (reine Vernunft) to a unified moral form of reasoning that captures a Unity of Being and Divine Order.
Kant distinguishes between:
- Verstand (Proto-Phenomonological Understanding (i.e. experience is structured by the subject)) — Unity of Representation (appearances) by means of rules. This is the faculty that organises sensory experience using concepts and categories (such as causality, substance, etc.) into coherent knowledge. It operates within the realm of possible experience and is responsible for making sense of empirical data; and
- Vernunft (Pure Reason (reine Vernunft) & Practical Reason (praktische Vernunft ). Unity of rules by means of principles: This is a higher-order faculty that seeks ultimate principles and unifying ideas beyond experience. It tries to go beyond the limits of possible experience, leading to metaphysical inquiry (pure reason) such as truth, being, reality and existence, together with the exploration of foundational questions of human agency (practical reason) such as ethics and morality.]
Heidegger, Technology, Negation and Illumination of Human Being
“Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology”…
– Martin Heidegger
Technology as a mode of revealing Being in a Modern Scientific, Rational and Technological Age
Heidegger saw the essence of technology as by no means anything technological but as an enframing (Gestell) — how Being manifests itself in a Technological Society.
He did not necessarily see technology as good or bad; however, he saw how technology shapes the nature of human thinking and ways of human existence(i.e. the act of Being).
A Gestell — mode of framing and understanding — that underlies the technology.
For example, the application of science to modern technology is revealed through seeing everything in nature as a standing reserve — a Bestand — or as orderly resources for technical application.
The standing reserve of a river is viewed as a resource that could be dammed to generate energy.
The standing reserve of a forest is viewed as a resource to be used for timber and furniture.
Even the adoption of terms such as describing humans as capital in capitalism, human resource departments in organisations, or describing a particular category of a Government Agency — a Natural Resources Department — can be seen through the prism of this Technological Society enframing.
People and nature are resources to be used for technical means.
A Technology Society where scientific and economic rationalism were the primary forms of legitimate knowledge and enframing.
A way of structuring our experience, attitudes, values, and the nature of our relationship and engagement in being in the world.
A scientific, rational and technological enframing of Being that is now endemic in Modernity and Post-Modernity.
Technology as a light that illuminates the meaning of Human Being
In Martin Heidegger’s Book, The Questions Concerning Technology, he moves beyond the notion of enframing as the essence of Technology to explore the relational nature of Human Beings with Technology.
By doing so, he begins to reveal the role that technology can play (similar to nature) in illuminating the meaning of Human Being.
It was a significant shift because it implicitly brought Dasein into the discussion.
In other words, the relation of this Being (Dasein) to Being (Sein).
Human Beings have an innate capacity to interpret and inquire into the nature of Being — it questions, it engages with, and it gives meaning to this relationship.
Rather than being trapped by technology as it enframes the World towards an inevitable technological dystopia (e.g. Humans and Nature as standing reserves), technology can be a form of illumination similar to how the Ancient Greeks saw Humans’ relationship with Nature.
In doing so, human consciousness can be awakened into a free relationship to technology once we open ourselves to the essence of technology.
Seeing things as they are — letting things appear as they are — in the condition of revealing Truth.
The great discovery of Ancient Greek Philosophers, such as Aristotle (father of Modern Science), was to begin to understand Humanity’s relationship with the Natural World as a light that could be used to illuminate lasting Truths and the nature of Being (Metaphysics — Study of Being — Science of Reality).
Heidegger embraces the same ancient philosophical logic and applies it to Humans’ relationship with Technology.
It recognises our embodiment — Being in the World (Heidegger) — and how it is through the relational interpretation of the World (via Semiotics/Meaning) that primordial Truths could be revealed.
In other words, through Human’s relationship with technology, the essence of technology could be revealed.
Until now, our Modern Technological Society’s conception of technology had been anchored in it being a means to an end and a tool to catalyse human action (Hegel’s Second Nature).
An idea that was instrumental and anthropological in the nature of how we viewed technology.
One that has been increasingly anchored in power and control.
But what if technology had its own spirit ( an alternative mechanistic Ghost in the Machine) that emerges over time?
A spirit that had a life of its own and increasingly whose desires no longer aligned with Humanity’s survival and flourishing.
One whose power increasingly could not be controlled.
Existential risks are emerging from new technologies, such as nuclear weapons and the application of more & more computation to decision-making (i.e. the alignment problem).
In the book, Heidegger questions the prevailing means to an end and instrumental conception of modern technology’s essence.
He also questions our ongoing capacity to master the spirit of technology.
A quote:
“But this much remains correct: modern technology, too is a means to an end. This is why the instrumental conception of technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right relation to technology. Everything depends on our manipulating technology in the proper manner as a means. We will, as we say, “get” technology “spiritually in hand.” We will master it. The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.
But suppose now that technology were no mere means: how would it stand with the will to master it? Yet we said, did we not, that the instrumental definition of technology is correct?”…
Heidegger then revisits the answer to the question of technology lying in uncovering its true essence.
“However, in order to be correct, this fixing by no means needs to uncover the thing in question in its essence. Only at the point where such an uncovering happens does the true come to pass”…
Heidegger begins to explore technology through the frame of Aristotle’s Theory of Causality and his four causes in an attempt to answer the question Why?
Exploring causality enables Heidegger to move beyond the notion of technology as an instrument to be mastered, and he concludes that the true essence of technology is one of revealing the truth.
“So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain transfixed in the will to master it. We press on past the essence of technology.
When, however, we ask how the instrumental comes to presence as a kind of causality, then we experience this coming to presence as the destining of a revealing.
When we consider, finally, that the coming to presence of the essence of technology comes to pass in the granting that needs and uses man so that he may share in revealing, then the following becomes clear:
The essence of technology is, in a lofty sense, ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth”…
Negation: Technology as a potential anti-environment (absence) that illuminates the eternal nature of the Human Condition (presence)
Through technology’s capacity to potentially create an anti-environment (negation), the essence of technology is revealed.
The Ghost in the Machine.
One of illumination that reveals the essence of being Human and eternal Truths.
As we increasingly embrace more and more technology, our awareness of the potential anti–environment ( an absence) is exposed through a growing cognitive dissonance.
Providing the capacity for reflection and learning.
Intelligence is not Computation — Dasein and the World-Disclosing Nature of Human Intelligence
“So we must start from this dual nature of intelligence as something both biological and logical”…
— Jean Piaget
In The Obfuscation of Intelligence — Modernity, Post-Modernity and the Tower of Babel, the absurdity of the prevailing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI ) narrative and zeitgeist was explored.
Not only was Marxism, Modern Gnosticism, Nietzschean Perspectivism, Cartesianism and Nominalism (all had become endemic since the arrival of Modernity) eroding Human Being’s capacity to Reason, they were all central to influencing the prevailing AGI narrative.
Another example of Modern Sophism.
Furthermore, the AGI debate completely overlooks and ignores the central role of Semiotics and, in particular, Peircian Triadic Semiotics, including:
- Its foundational role in the Triadic of Reason, which begins in Human Being’s embodied and entangled being in the world (refer Being — Heidegger — refer — Peirce — Abductive Reasong );
- The Triadic Nature of Peircian Semiotics — Observer (Subject), Observed (Object) with meaning mediated via Signs;
- The normative principle of the Pragmatic Maxim, which ensures Ontological and Epistemological alignment (refer to Aristotle, Kant and Peirce Categories); and
- The inherent nature of the Peircian Semiotic Triadic that combines Semiotics (Meaning), Metaphysics (Being) and Logic (Knowing).
If we revisit Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s understanding of intelligence as being part biological and part logical, how can a mechanical machine satisfy such a criteria, or was the entire AGI narrative an ontological philosophical error and category mistake?
If we revisit Rosmini’s Triadic of Being (Real Being, Ideal Being and Moral Being), Heiddeger’s concept of Dasein (the relationship of Human Being to Being) and Heinz von Foerster’s Second Order Cybernetics, how can a mechanical machine satisfy such a criteria or was the entire AGI narrative an ontological philosphical error and category mistake?
Was the prevailing AGI narrative the most important example to date of Heidegger’s conclusion (refer above) that the essence of Technology would be in ultimately illuminating and revealing the essence of being Human and eternal Truths?
The Absence of Dasein in AGI: A Critique of Symbolic Intelligence
“Nature isn’t a computer and the laws of physics aren’t a program”…
— Cole Mathis
“The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is only syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content”…
– John Searle
If Dasein reflects Human Beings relationship to Being (i.e. Heidegger — Being in the World) where through human’s consciousness, embodiment in the world and our lived experience humans can bring the meaning of being to the human mind — gradual unfolding of the relationship between being, meaning and knowing — a form of intelligence that is both biological and logical, then is the notion of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) a modern sophism and an ontological philosophical error — a category mistake?
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything”…
— Émile Leon Cammaerts
Is the major critique of AGI the absence of Dasein, where the computer simply does not participate in this relational nature of being?
Refer — The Chinese Room Argument [ LINK ]
Refer — Semiotic Sign Machines [ LINK ]
Refer — The Obfuscation of Intelligence — Modernity, Post-Modernity and the Tower of Babel [ LINK ]
Refer — AI’s challenge of understanding the world [ LINK ]
Refer — The Future of Artificial General Intelligence [ LINK ]
Refer — Debates on the nature of Artificial General Intelligence [ LINK ]
Refer — The Map is eating the Territory [ LINK ]
Refer — The Incoming Tidal Wave Of Data Pollution In AI [ LINK]
Refer — AI and Synthetic Data Risks [ LINK ]
Refer — AI, Science and the Objectivity Illusion [ LINK ] [ LINK ]
Refer — Marcus on AI [ LINK ]
Refer — The implausibility of intelligence explosion [ LINK ]
Refer — On the Limitations of Compute Thresholds as a Governance Strategy [ LINK ]
Refer — Why US AI Act Compute Thresholds Are Misguided [ LINK ]
Refer — Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models[LINK ] [ LINK ]
Refer — LLMs Hallucinations & Ontological Shadows [ LINK ]
Refer — AI and Ideology [ LINK ] [ LINK ]
Refer — Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value — The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent [ LINK ]
Refer — Meta’s AI chief: LLMs will never reach human-level intelligence [ LINK ]
Refer — Why large language models aren’t headed toward humanlike understanding[LINK ]
Refer — Don’t Believe AI Hype, This is Where it’s Actually Headed | Oxford’s Michael Wooldridge | AI History [ LINK ]
What AGI reveals about Being Human
“If men create intelligent machines, or fantasise about them, it is either because they secretly despair of their own intelligence or because they are in danger of succumbing to the weight of a monstrous and useless intelligence which they seek to exorcise by transferring it to machines, where they can play with it and make fun of it. By entrusting this burdensome intelligence to machines we are released from any responsibility to knowledge, much as entrusting power to politicians allows us to disdain any aspiration of our own to power”…
- Jean Baudrillard
A category mistake, a category error, categorical mistake, or mistake of a category is a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property
Ironically, it is precisely in the embrace of AGI that our understanding of the nature of Human Being, Intelligence, Consciousness, Reality and the relationship between Being, Knowing, and Meaning begins to shine more and more clearly.
Modern technology is the potential anti-environment where it is through negation (i.e. absence — what AGI lacks ) that the existential uniqueness of human beings becomes strikingly visible.
The relationship between absence and presence.
The relationship between the metaphysical and physical.
The relationship between the transcendent and immanent.
The relationship between the actual and potential.
The relationship between the necessary and the possible.
The relationship of this Being (Dasein) to Being (Sein).
Human consciousness is a participatory metaxic semiotic process that allows for the interpretation of mind-independent reality via a mind-dependent representation, leading to learning, knowledge formation, habits and the actualisation of potential.
As we push further into the territory of synthetic minds, we are confronted not only with the presence (capabilities) of machines but with their absences.
The machine does not feel the press of time, does not suffer the weight of mortality, does not care.
It does not open itself to Being.
“A central failure of the “mind as a computational system” theory is that computations, per se, are devoid of meaning”…
– Stuart A. Kauffman
This absence is not a limitation to be overcome, but a philosophical mirror on what it means to be a Human Being (presence).
AGI’s failure to reflect as Dasein illuminates what it means for humans to be.
Our intelligence is not some detachable module or a piece of software (i.e. a Ghost in the Machine) but an expression of our Unity of Being (Mind, Body and Soul).
The relation of this Being (Dasein) to Being (Sein).
A Univocity of Being that reflects the relationship between the Contingent Being of Man (Created) to the Necessary Being of God (Creator).
It is a form of knowing that unfolds over time through relationships grounded in the meaning of Being.
In the end, the ghost in the machine is not a mystery to be solved but an unfolding series of questions to be turned back on ourselves.
What does it mean to be?
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”…
— Genesis 1:26–27
