Philosophy 101E

I made the point today that we are embodied on the internet. I hadn’t planned to discuss this, so my response was a bit scattered (stream of consciousness, heh). Let me try to make it a bit clearer:

We are embodied on the internet. Technology doesn’t simply extend our capacities, but it also changes the kinds of environments in which we act. This in turn changes the kinds of actions that are required for engaging in those environments. Sometimes this results in actions that are very different from the kinds of behaviors we make while engaging nature, but that doesn’t make them any less engaged actions.

It is harder for Dreyfus to make his arguments about technology stick now days, because the technology we use today is literally engaging our bodies in ways it never could before. Take a look at any video on YouTube that shows people using the Wii. These people are clearly engaged with their whole bodies.

But there is a sense in which the Wii example is too easy and superficial. I think it is better to think of the skill required to navigate any complicated website or program. Think about people who use Photoshop, or Final Cut, or any other big, complicated program. It is impossible to doubt that there is a learned skill involved in using this kind of software. It is something that requires practice and training; its the kind of thing that some people are better at than others. But Dreyfus’ argument is that skills are acquired through the use of the body. If he’s right, then we must be embodied when we are using these programs.

Or think about all the social rules and norms involved in interacting with any online community- your favorite message boards; Facebook; MySpace; Wikipedia; this blog. These are all very complicated social environments. We all have some sense of what is appropriate for these environments, and what is inappropriate, and how to behave. Some people do it better than others. MySpace is full of social cues- music, backgrounds, images, links, friends, etc. MySpace is just like a fashion accessory to your online identity.

If these places on the Internet are really environments that take skill to navigate, then you must conclude that we are embodied on the internet. If that’s the case, then the Internet doesn’t pose a threat to our humanity. At most it poses a threat to our current understanding of ourselves and our environment, because in a real sense it changes what we are, and what we interact with. But that doesn’t undermine our humanity; it reaffirms it.

Facebook and MySpace users aren’t examples of people who despise the body, or who think that the body is obsolete. They are people who desperately want to integrate these new possibilities and forms of expression into their lives. They are people who want to make their online identity real and meaningful and relevant. They are people who are trying to find a stable social environment, not just as an abstract mind or identity, but as a real person.

Here are links to most of the videos I showed tonight. Its a little much to embed all these videos, so I’m just linking them. Feel free to post any comments you have on any of these videos, or link to others you find interesting.

Music Videos
Bjork - All is full of love
Bjork - Bachelorette
Bjork - Hyperballad (we didn’t watch this one, but its worth seeing)
U.N.K.L.E - Rabbit in your headlights
Daft Punk - Technologic
Aphex Twin - Rubber Johnny
Aphex Twin - Monkey Drummer

Robot Videos
Big Dog
Robot Chair
Film Making Robot (Some additional commentary)
You can see lots more robot stuff on my website.

Misc
Interactive Display
Stelarc (This is referenced in Clark’s book)

Some of the recent conversation going on in class is particularly interesting. I like more of this material on technology because I feel that I, like most people, naturally have such a deeper connection with technology. I don’t know about most other people but I’m slightly misguided on who exactly to believe when we talk about Gehlen and Heidegger’s ideas. For me I think that both men have points that I could make myself believe more. I find the broad sense that Gehlen uses ‘’culture” in to speak about how it’s about the habits or traditions or even the signs and symbols we keep define our culture. In class Daniel used the example of the highway system and how/why it works. Our road system is relatively pretty safe and predictable because we have all chosen to adopt a particular symbol system that we abide by. Our system allows people to travel even though the person driving in the next lane has a different destination, a different way of life and may be nothing like you at all, but it’s funny to see how for some seconds on the highway that we pass somebody we are able to peacefully coexist. From this cultural definition and examples like this, Gehlen touches on technology and goes to say that technology is created to help make up for he deficiencies of man. It’s crazy to think how right he actually is. We build everything around us to enhance our lives and ourselves, we built planes because we weren’t meant to naturally fly. The interesting part is that technology will never cease to progress and man will continue to build to make our lives easier. I personally believe in the pursuit of technology but I also think that as more and more is created we as people are moved to become lazier. For example, the TV allows us to connect with the world without leaving our house, the remote lets us flip channels without leaving the couch. In some ways I feel that technology is helping us to become lazier than we need to be. On the other hand, technology is obviously revolutionizing our world in the field of medicine for example and constantly finding remedies and cures for the diseases that we cannot fight off ourselves (because we are deficient.) Heidegger on the other hand has a very simple point with a lot of other text around it. Heidegger it seems, believe that technology will hide the truth of the real world. For example Daniel mentioned in class that humans use the technology we have to exploit the resources of our environment for our use. Heidegger would say that doing this only helps hide what nature really is from us. While I agree with the statement to some degree I, I almost feel like he is suggesting that we stop our production of technology. It seems as if he would rather us move back to a more simple stone age like time. Though a thought, I believe our society is much to immersed in the advancement of technology to ever move backwards.

This post is just initial thoughts and impressions from the first couple chapters of Natural-Born Cyborgs. When I purchased the book I was assumed the focus was on electronic gadgets implanted into the body, such as pace-makers, cochlear implants, muscle stimulators/relaxors. He actually makes it his point NOT to talk about such things.

Clark spends the first two sections talking about how humans were cyborgs way before we ever had a pacemaker installed to regulate heart beats. The incorporation of technology into ours bodies does not have to be as concrete implanting something battery operated using surgery. Clark says that everytime we interface with any form of technology, that is the same as the well-imagined cyborg presented in sci-fi movies. Using a computer, writing down notes using a pen and paper, driving a car- all examples of cybernetic incorporations. This ability to interface with an infinite amount of different technologies is also what makes us different than the rest of the animal kingdom. The only exceptions would be the use of primitive tools by some mammals, but I think the degree of difference between using a stick to gather ants and using a cars with thousands of moving parts and electrical circuits obviously still separates us from animal tool-users. It is an interesting take on technology. But after thinkking about it, it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch. Technology doesn’t have to be inside our skin to be integrated in our lives. Clark makes this point using cel phones as an example. It has become such a dominant part of everyday life. Many people keep it on there person at all times. Some have a bluetooth headset in their ear at all times. There is a slang term in Finland that refers to the cell phone as an “arm extension.” I would have to agree that many forms of technology are becoming so “everyday” that it would be hard to argue that they are not a part of us.

I’m going to try something new here. As we go through new subjects, I’m going to post an open thread on the topic. This is for people who have questions or comments on a subject, but not enough to write a full post, and are waiting around for someone else to post on the topic so they could comment on it. Hopefully this helps the discussion move along, and hopefully it also prepares you a bit more for the final.

So use these open threads to leave any question or comment you have on the topic. It doesn’t even have to be a full comment- if you were unclear about something in lecture, just ask, and I’ll try to respond.

I’ll get the discussion going with some quotes from the text and some questions:

If by technique we understand the capacities and means whereby man puts nature into his own service, by identifying nature’s properties and laws in order to exploit them and to control their interaction, clearly technique, in this highly general sense, is part and parcel of man’s very essence. It truely mirrors man– like man himself it is clever, it represents something intrinsically improbable, it bears a complex and twisted relationship to nature

[…]

Like man, [technique] is inventive, resourceful, life-fostering and at the same time life-destroying, involved with primeval nature in a complex relationship. Technique constitutes, as does man himself, nature artificelle.

[…]

Scientific research employs ever-new technical devices; nature is forced open through technique. The scientist much reach an understanding with the technician, for each problem is defined by the not-yet-available equipment required to solve it. Advances in theoretical physics, for instance, depend no less upon electronic computers than upon the brains of physicists.

[…]

The fascination with automatisms is a prerational, transpractical impulse, which previously, for millennia, found expression in magic– the technique of things and processes beyond our senses– and has more recently found its full realization in clocks, engines, and all manner of rotating mechanisms. Whoever considers from a psychological viewpoint the magic which cars exercise upon today’s young, cannot doubt that the interests appealed to lie deeper than those of a rational and practical nature. If this seems improbable, one should consider the fact that a machine’s automatism exercises a fascination entirely independent of its practical uses, a fascination that might well be best embodied in a perpetual motion machine whose only goal and activity would consist in forever reproducing the same circular motion. None of the innumerable individuals who over the centuries have grappled with the insoluble problem of perpetual motion, did so in view of any practical effect. Instead, they were all fascinated by the singular appeal of a machine that runs itself, a clock that winds itself. Such an appeal is not merely intellectual in nature, but has deeper sources.

Gehlen, following Nietzsche, claims that man is underdetermined by nature. Can we make sense of the claim that nature left man deficient in comparison to other animals?

Is technology fundamental to man’s essence? Does technology mirror man’s ‘twisted’ relationship with nature?

As human beings, we are separated from in animals because we are underdetermined in nature. We have no little niche in the natural world in which we were designed to live in. That is why we were given to ability to use tools and create things.

I believe that we’ve made evolution come to a grinding halt. Instead of being like every other organism on the face of the earth and changing to better fit into our environment, we humans are the only ones who change our environment to better suit our needs. Our dependence on technology in this way will cause us to remain homo sapiens for years to come. All the modern day conveniences that come with technology make things extremely easy for us.

While these conveniences are currently improving our general quality of life, it is also crippling us in the long run. Without evolution, we can not genetically change to improve. We have drugs and treatments for almost all types of ailments, so genetically fatal diseases cannot be weeded out in evolution. Someday, we will run out of raw material and natural resources. Humans will no longer be able to depend on technology. Basically, we’d have to play evolutionary catch-up or we’d be screwed.

In class, I was under the impression Hume would explain for us how the separate entities of mind and body were connected; I thought Hume was to explain the “God card,” Descartes pulled. When I asked how Hume would do this, I was confused with the response I received. Therefore, I went home and thought about it for a while. In another class, I just recently read the work, Nature, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to Emerson, there are two ways of looking at nature, the first is a material way that is tangible to corporeal beings, and the other is in a religious way. Emerson branched off Descartes’ foundation of “Cogito ergo sum,” and wrote this piece about nature’s relation to the mind. Emerson believed in idealism: that if an individual saw nature and the mind as one thing, then that individual would become part of nature and therefore become God. I agree with Emerson to an extent. Just as in the Bowerbird clips, the beings of nature appear to have thought; for example different female animals were attracted to different nests the male animals made. Their bodies were all the same, however a different entity allowed the birds to distinguish and choose one nest from another. If we can prove that nature and the mind are of one sphere, that idealism exists among all living creatures on the earth, then perhaps this connection with nature (and therefore a direct connection with God) is the link between the mind and the body Descartes needed. Alternatively, we could wonder if the mind and nature are connected, does a corporeal world even exist. Is it possible that the realm of the mind exists in the individual and in God, Who surrounds us in our environment? So I guess I am proposing Barkley’s argument with a bit of a twist. We have nothing beyond our experiences, which our minds create; however, what if our minds were in an interacting network of minds of nature and individual souls such as ourselves? What if this interaction between nature and mind, which makes us God, is what creates the senses our mind experiences: what if when we smell a flower or see the blue sky our mind is interacting with God, and there is no physical realm at all.

Do to the amount of argument between scientific and philosophical views today, I thought I’d try to get a dialog going on here and see if any clarification or new questions could be raised. I’ll start by saying that I am a Physics major, so I tend to think scientifically.

My first thoughts after some of the discussion about inductive reasoning today were, “Oh crap! I guess I never considered that before.” For a simpler version of what induction is, it is good to look at a mathematical problem. In mathematical induction, in order to prove a theorem, you first prove it with very simple numbers to show that the answer works for some cases. Then, you assume that the theorem works for all cases up to some number (typically called ‘n’). If you can then prove it for the number ‘n+1,’ you can conclude that it must work for all cases. This is similar to saying that the sun has risen for everyday of your life, and if it rises tomorrow, then it will, therefore, rise everyday of your life.

This has certainly been the way many laws of physics have been established. If you can view a trend in an object’s movement falling towards the Earth, then there must be some mathematical representation for this that holds true every time. However, some of the rules that everyone thinks are true always, are sometimes questioned. For example, physicist have hypothesized that it may be possible for light to travel faster or slower than that of its given value, 3*10^8 m/s. Furthermore, from some of my exposure to String Theory, I know that one of the issues involved is the probability of a specific occurrence. The example given was that there is always a percentage that when you place a book on a table that it will fall straight through the table. It turns out, however, that the probability is so low that either it has never happened or no one has ever observed it happen.

So what does this mean for empiricists? Just because certain events happen time in and time out, should we not count on their consistency because it might all be an elaborate scheme that could change at any moment? Reasoning by induction certainly works mathematically, and the only event in which it would change is if the numbers changed meaning. But even in that case the theorem would still hold true for the true meaning of the problem, just not for the same symbols.

I am inclined to sit somewhere on the proverbial fence for this. To me, knowledge must be some place in between these two. An example for when the inductive reasoning used by rationalists would go wrong that just came to me, is an example involving boiling water. By all accounts with bubbling water, I can assume that if water is bubbling, it must be boiling and is therefore hot. However, bubbling water in a pot could also be caused by an air pump putting air into the water. I would perceive the water as boiling water, but it would not actually be hot. Thus, my assumption that all bubbling water is boiling and is hot would be false.

On the other hand, as a scientist I cannot discount the reasoning that has proven so many theories and laws of science.

Anyone else conflicted?

Here are a few clips from the screening on Bowerbirds we watched last Thursday. Just follow the link below to see the YouTube links. I highly recommend you watch these clips, because I will bring them up in class later in the semester.

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Just a couple quick reminders:

1. Read Descartes’ Meditations One and Two (pages 13-24) for class tomorrow.

2. Remeber that your first post is due one week from Thursday, on 9/14.

3. I’m going to be screening the first movie for the class this Thursday evening at 6pm in 1FLB G30. Thats the Foriegn Language Building, and I think its in the basement. I will bring snacks and will be giving extra credit to anyone who shows up. Plus, anything I screen for the class is fair game for web posts and comments, so there’s every reason in the world to show up.

The movie is an hour long nature documentary by David Attenborough on bowerbirds. I dont want to give too much away about the documentary, but its really neat and will help lead us into the discussion of technology later in the course. I’ve got some videos after the break about a couple of interesting birds, to give you a taste of what to expect, but the bowerbird blows them all out of the water.

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Here’s a neat little video to stand in contrast to the Dawn of Man sequence from 2001. This is from the David Attenborough special on mammals. Note that these are chimps that were raised in captivity, and have had lots of exposure to humans. This footage was taken during their reintroduction into the wild.

I plan on showing more David Attenborough clips throughout the semester, and will probably screen a full special some evening next week.

Since people are starting to sign up and use the site, I’ll start my regular schedule of posting. I always like to start with this:

From Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

The whole movie is worth watching, and I may very well screen it at some later date if there is interest. But the Dawn of Man sequence is just plain awesome. Comments on the clip are appreciated.

Just a quick reminder: remember to select categories to label your posts for easy searching! If you don’t know how, read this again.