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The End ofThe (Dreyfus) Affair
CT2001 The Fourth International Conference
on Cognitive Technology INSTRUMENTS OF
MIND Monday 6th - Thursday 9th August,
2001 University of Warwick, UK

• (Post)Heideggerian Meditations on Man, Machines,
  and Meaning

Syed Mustafa Ali, Ph.D
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Contents

• The Schizophrenia Problem (SP)
• Emotion, Consciousness The Hard Problem (HP)
• A Possible Heideggerian Solution
• Artificial Systems with Emergent Consciousness
• Problems with The Heideggerian Solution
• Vacuous Nature, Evolutionary Continuity HP
• Post-Heideggerian Solutions
• Whiteheadian Panexperientialism
• Can SP Be Solved?
• Design, Emergence The Phenomenology of
  Construction

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Cognitive Technology (CT)

• In CT, we regard computers as
• Mental Prostheses
• Janney 1997
• Hence, our concern is with constructing
• Man-Machine Hybrids (or Cyborgs)
• Haraway 1985, Clark 2001
• Therefore, our objective appears to be
• IA (Intelligence Amplification) NOT AI
• Brooks 1988

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The Schizophrenia Problem (SP)

• Human psychic self-amputation caused by the
  computer bracketing emotion from cognition during
  human-computer interaction (HCI)
• Janney 1997

Perhaps, but CT will need to reconsider its
position on AI (more precisely, on
the replication of emotion)
Can SP be solved?
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Emotion and Consciousness

• Consciousness is not necessary for the occurrence
  of all emotions
• However, consciousness is a necessary existential
  condition for emotional experience
• Picard 1997
• Is this fact relevant to SP?

Claim Experience is a difference that makes a
difference (that is, it is causal in some sense)
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The Hard Problem (HP)
Explaining how ontological subjectivity (or
first-person experience) can arise in (or from)
an ontologically-objective (or non-experiential)
substrate Chalmers 1996

• If consciousness is necessary for emotional
  experience and if experience is causal
• Then in order to solve SP, CT must first solve HP

AI (more precisely, artificial consciousness) for
IA
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What Kind of AI for IA?

• GOFAI (Good-Old-Fashioned-AI)
• Characteristics
• symbolic (representational)
• atomistic (a-contextual)
• abstract (disembodied)
• Problems
• The Frame Problem Dreyfus 1972
• The Hard Problem (HP)

Post-Computationalist AI
and IA
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Post-Computationalist AI

• Examples
• connectionist approaches to
• consciousness Globus 1995
• cognition Clark 1997
• robotic approaches to
• AI/Alife Wheeler 1996 Prem 1997
• All the above approaches are grounded in Dreyfus
  AI critique which is itself grounded in

Heideggerian Onto-Phenomenology
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Heideggerian Phenomenology

• According to Dreyfus 1991, the existential
  analytic of the Dasein (or situated
  phenomenological inquiry into the ontological
  structures of human being) presented in Being and
  Time Heidegger 1927 indicates the primacy of

non-thematic, pragmatic (embedded, embodied)
coping as the basis of intelligent engagement
with the world
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Heidegger and CT

• Subjective experience (consciousness) as grounded
  in and emergent from being-in-the-world, an
  existential condition that is ontologically prior
  to subjectivity and objectivity Dreyfus 1991
• SP solvable because HP solved (in principle) via
  construction of

Artificial Daseins capable of emergent generation
of consciousness
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The Dreyfus Affair
Hubert L. Dreyfus
Martin Heidegger
The Convertible (symbolising AI technology)

• Claim The affair has only been allowed to
  continue because Dreyfus pragmatist
  appropriation of Heidegger is, ultimately,
  technology-friendly

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The End of The Dreyfus Affair

• Dreyfus Heidegger is just one among many

Also, Blattner 1992, Fell 1992 and Dreyfus
himself 1992 against pragmatist
interpretations of Heidegger
Ali (2001)
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Heideggerian Naturalism (HN)

• According to Dreyfus 1991, Heideggers
  onto-phenomenology is consistent with a
  commitment to a robust realism that allows access
  to a human-independent nature or nature in-itself
• Crucially, nature in-itself is disclosed as being
  essentially vacuous or non-experiential
• Heidegger himself 1927 refers to it as a
  barren mercilessness and absurd or meaningless

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(Hard) Problems with HN

• Experiential being is an existential fact
• Non-experiential being is, at best, a
  phenomenal inference Griffin 1998
• Notwithstanding Daseins ontological priority
  over subjectivity and objectivity, Heideggers
  commitment to an anthropocentric dualism of
  meaningful humans and meaningless nature
  engenders HP which emergence cannot solve under
  the assumption of the ontological continuity of
  phenomenal evolution

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Post-Heideggerian Solutions

• Need to reconsider the ontology of nature
• Panexperientialism Griffin 1998
• Nature as relationally-constituted from
  temporally-dipolar physical-mental events (actual
  occasions of experience)
• Ontological monism, phenomenal pluralism
• Phenomenology grounded in organisation
• Experiential complexes (compound individuals)
• Non-Experiential complexes (aggregates)

HP solved (at least in principle)
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Can SP Be Solved?

• Notwithstanding a panexperientialist conception
  of nature, consciousness would not emerge from
  (in) an artificial Dasein because construction -
  whether top-down or bottom-up - involves a
  subject-object orientation and hence, an external
  relation between beings that reinforces the
  dualism engendering HP

In short, SP cannot be solved