Understanding Heidegger on technology (2014)

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/understanding-heidegger-on-technology

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

54 35 5 years ago

imbnwa3• 5 years ago

Despite the actual historical research not being so hot or voluminous, I find Bataille's theory of General Economy a much more robust and more tangible way of describing the conditions of modernity while also indicating a specific response/solution, namely, that we have to re-learn to sacrifice, not accumulate, excess, like our ancestors did for most of human existence.

We don't build ridiculously grand and inefficient structures like Pyramids and Cathedrals or practice ritual sacrifice because we no longer entertain the notion that human economy necessarily involves realms that require the destruction of excess production (and no, the destruction of excess dairy or agricultural production in the name of market controls on prices is not that).

All the way up to early modernity humans unanimously understood economy like this to some extent, even if Abrahamic religions changed the flow around so that economy of surplus came to revolve around the excess of desire-production in humans specifically rather involving the entire realm of goods (Judaism still understood the older arrangement to a certain extent: we know that Cain and Abel burned produce to God, or that Jacob was on the cusp of sacrificing his only son to God; in Christianity, as Nietzsche noted, the debtor, God, pays himself back with his own flesh, and Christian practice proper is this immolation of the 'excess of the flesh', human desire, to our own more godly selves, our souls).

maxbendick2• 5 years ago

Love to see Bataille and Heidegger on hn :)

The concept of the accursed share seems pretty applicable to space races of the present. Maybe it's a sign the flux of capital is saturating?

kaycebasques2• 5 years ago

What is Bataille's seminal work on the theory of general economy? The Accursed Share? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accursed_Share

imbnwa3• 5 years ago

Yes, those texts

juliend2• 5 years ago

I don't want to be too pedantic here ;) , but it was Abraham who was on the cusp of sacrificing his only son to God. But you were close; Jacob was his grand-son.

And I'm not sure what Nietzsche said exactly about it but God is considered to be the creditor (not debtor), who pays for us the humans (indebted by our sins), to himself, with the flesh of his only son.

imbnwa3• 5 years ago

Yeah wrote all those out off the top of my head, a draft phase woulda been useful indeed, these corrections are all true

sn41• 5 years ago

Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, I think. (Ibrahim and Ismail in Islam?)

Mark_Kumleben3• 5 years ago

Very interesting to see this on HN - Heidegger's theory of technology was ground-breaking then and has only become more timely.

If anybody has questions about this article, Mark Blitz was my advisor in grad school and I wrote an MA thesis applying Heidegger's theory to modern AI research. Happy to clarify any of the issues raised here since, even with Blitz's explanation, Heidegger can be a tough nut to crack.

maxbendick2• 5 years ago

Would love a short explanation/link to your MA thesis, that seems very interesting!

syntaxfree• 5 years ago

Hubert Dreyfus worked on Heideggerean critiques of AI while at MIT rubbing shoulders with Marvin Minsky and the like.

There’s a good documentary called “Being in the world”; last time I checked it had been posted on YouTube.

Mark_Kumleben3• 5 years ago

For sure! Of course, the official website has it paywalled, so here's a Google Docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WL1F-sEazLeo8uFjNpPyFLak...

The Heidegger stuff is in the fourth section, 'Artificial Intelligence In Technological Society', but a rough summary: Heidegger argues that the essence of technology involves a command to human beings to order the world as standing-reserves of resources. Our specific place in this schema is as the being who can do the work of ordering, of revealing the world as orderable standing-reserve and then actually putting it into a particular order (e.g. of a supply chain). However, modern AI, with its emphasis on pattern-recognition, search, optimizing for a goal, etc., is also working towards that function. This has two implications. First, it suggests why AI research heads in this direction, because it's the way human intelligence manifests in the technological framework (and, thus, suggests that AI research could potentially benefit from trying to replicate other aspects of the human mind). Secondly, it means that modern AI might affect a Heideggerian theory of technology by making it possible for humans to delegate the work of ordering to AI, which wouldn't have appeared a possibility in Heidegger's day. If we can in fact hand off the task of ordering to AI, how should we do that and what effects might it have on human culture? While it appears a loss of agency, it may even have a liberating effect in the same way other technologies have liberated us from previous forms of labour.

kaycebasques2• 5 years ago

I don't remember the details but I recall Philosophize This! having an accessible series on Heidegger (with one episode [1] specifically discussing his views on technology).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_BxMwRywEk

MichaelZuo• 5 years ago

“ Experiencing technology as a kind — but only one kind — of revealing, and seeing man’s essential place as one that is open to different kinds of revealing frees us from “the stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same, to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil.” Indeed, Heidegger says at the end of the lecture, our examining or questioning of the essence of technology and other kinds of revealing is “the piety of thought.” By this questioning we may be saved from technology’s rule.”

The article assumes a strange contorted definition of ‘technology’ to try to jam a certain point in.

By most definitions, human language would be considered as part of ‘technology’, certainly the written word would be considered so by nearly all. From that understanding, to question at all requires ‘technology’ thus making the final sentence absurd.

nathias• 5 years ago

Common sense definitions are useless in philosophy.

pmoriarty5• 5 years ago

"In his landmark book Being and Time (1927), Heidegger made the bold claim that Western thought from Plato onward had forgotten or ignored the fundamental question of what it means for something to be -- to be present for us prior to any philosophical or scientific analysis."

No. "what it means for something to be" is, for Heidegger, merely "ontic being", which he was not interested in. Instead, Hedigger was interesested in "ontological being", or "the being of Being".

Now, what "the being of Being" is, is itself the subject of a multi-hundred page unfinished book of what is widely considered to be some of the most difficult writing in all of philosophy.

Because Heidegger's writing is so difficult and so open to interpretation (and re-interpretation), many philosophers disagree strongly about what he actually meant.

For example, what "Being" itself is, for Heidegger, is one of the biggest points of contention. The entire field of Christian Existentialism[1] crystalized around interpreting Heidegger's "Being" as God. But many other philosophers don't interpret it theistically at all.

His other essays outside of Being and Time are equally difficult to understand and open to interpretation. This includes "The Question Concerning Technology", and I'd caution strongly against taking any one summary or interpretation of it as gospel or the final word on the subject.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_existentialism

elefanten2• 5 years ago

So what is the value of such work, which is so open to interpretation that 100 years later you will find diametrically opposed takes on its meaning?

Does it not just devolve into a Rubik's Cube for literary nerds?

I ask seriously. I was deeply enchanted with critical / Continental philosophy for a decade, but I don't think I came out of it with any unique insights. "Nothing can be proven to be objectively true" is an insight one can find many other places. Conjectures about what the driving forces of society are a dime a dozen, but any useful means of verifying and comparing them seems far out of our reach.

So, why all this study of the Heideggers, the Lacans, the Derridas. What does it really contribute to humanity?

pmoriarty5• 5 years ago

"why all this study of the Heideggers, the Lacans, the Derridas"

I can't speak for anyone else, but my interest in Heidegger dovetails with my interest in Asian and Indian religion and philosophy, and with my interest in the illusory nature of the world and what lies behind the world of appearances.

I'm not interested in Lacan or Derrida, so will leave them for others.

"What does it really contribute to humanity?"

Is having one's eye's opened or seeking ways to open one's eyes useful?

Does something have to "contribute to humanity" in order to be of value?

What did the Mona Lisa or other great works of art contribute to humanity? Should Beethoven never have written a note of music because none of it is useful? Or does Beethoven's music's use in parades finally justify its creation?

Can philosophy, like art and music, somehow connect us or open us up to the core of humanity or the world? Is that useful? Does it have to be?

atoav• 5 years ago

My take on it is as follows: Most of the thoughts we have day in and day out, even when tackling hard, existential or universal topics are constrained by the abstract aystems they are thought in. Think how language affects the way a person thinks. Of course you can also think mathematically, geometrically, in terms of pictures, colors, computer programes, small mechanical contraptions and so on.

What philosophers like Heidegger tried to do (the reason for the often hard to read language) is to go to places, think thoughts and create systems of reflection that are hard to express with language alone.

On top of that there have been certain philosophical movements who thought that thinking itself is more valuable than froming any coherent theory of the world into which all is forced to fit.

So in short: they tried to expand on thinking all while jumping through various hoops and trying to avoid various pitfalls.

pnexk2• 5 years ago

So what is the value of such work, which is so open to interpretation that 100 years later you will find diametrically opposed takes on its meaning?

Different takes to make sense of complex phenomena happen in many fields. It's not a co-incidence that it is especially as such in the realm of our culture where challenging existing interpretations is common place.

Conjectures about what the driving forces of society are a dime a dozen, but any useful means of verifying and comparing them seems far out of our reach.

Indeed it is difficult, but I would highly suggest not being too empirically minded about abstract concepts like these. What conceptual frameworks and methods are useful in one field (e.g. quantification and measurements in the sciences) do not carry over to another necessarily. Human societal structures and phenomena are complex and would be more difficult to make sense of were it not for useful works like these.

So, why all this study of the Heideggers, the Lacans, the Derridas. What does it really contribute to humanity?

One answer is tradition given these are thinkers part of significant and established schools of thought, and another is that there simply are contemporary scholars that find value in furthering and fleshing out the (usually dense) systems of thought and frameworks. Modern psychology for example has come about from philosophical and psychoanalysis frameworks, some of which are still explored and furthered alongside empirical investigations.

I might be mistaken, but it feels as if your post fails to wrap itself around the idea that not all human knowledge need not be something that contributes to practical or immediate assistance to humans or their productivity. And that instead, sometimes, it can be simply related towards the pursuit and sake of knowledge itself.

6AA4FD3• 5 years ago

With regards to Lacan, Heidegger, and Derrida— each in their own way, they hold off philosophical decision. Lacan stylistically (he sucks, but is pretty structural and emphatic about his registers, sexual distinctions, mirror stage, etc) and Heidegger and Lacan through their interrelated development of the problematic of closure and archi-writing, right? But Heidegger doesn't consign himself to closure, he very emphatically sees a way out in death, the condition of possibility for the authenticity of being. Derrida does not take a way out, but also does not write or reason arbitrarily, his process rests on the simultaneous articulation of a straightforward and historically oriented commentary, and a counterpoint exposed through the repetition of the language of the commentary back at itself until underlying confusions are revealed. This is the basic knowledge I assume you have after 10 years. If you are not familiar, I recommend Simon Critchley's 'Black Socrates', and 'The Ethics of Deconstruction' in addition to the Seminars, Being and Time, and Violence and Metaphysics obviously.

The way it reckons with your question, is that these points of tension, even when they are not fully resolved, allow us to come to a place of improved understanding about the systematic and historical functionality of the language and culture that produced them. This is really nothing new: we do not need to come to the same conclusion about any other subject, anthropological, historical, even hard-scientific, to deploy our provisional understanding. A concrete example of this is talking about moral reasoning- considering similarly non-philosophical work by Levinas, I have come to the conclusion that many of the ethical dilemmas I struggle with in my health care work are not neatly decidable, and are frequently more a question of how much of myself am I willing to sacrifice for my clients... or how much I can hold back for myself in good conscience, rather than a logically and arithmetically guaranteed minimum or maximum fair ratio. This is why deconstruction + pragmatism is such an interesting subject for people like Brandom and Rorty, I imagine.

hmsshagatsea• 5 years ago

Because Heidegger's writing is so difficult and so open to interpretation (and re-interpretation), many philosophers disagree strongly about what he actually meant.

There’s a bit of a joke out there about Heidegger’s difficulty. “Heidegger is impossible to translate - especially into German”

6AA4FD3• 5 years ago

It intuitively seems to me like "what it means for x" is not clearly one or the other, ontic or ontological. At a kind of indirect approach, the ambiguity whether we are actually investigating something ontically or ontologically is kind of a problem for the ontic approach... are we picking out Natural Kinds, or are they just the categories with the greatest utility and/or intelligibility to us?

Anyways, MH says 'so if we should reserve that term "ontology" for that theoretical inquiry which is explicitly devoted to the meaning of entities' (page 12 of the German edition). Wouldn't the meaning of being, as one of those theoretical entities, be an ontological question? Ontic being, on the other hand, would be ontic man, or the subject of the sciences? It could also be presence in the Derridean sense, but that is not really meaningful in the ontic register, since negation necessitates a Being...

I am not really a Heidegger guy so I would love some insight here.

50• 5 years ago

“In Heidegger’s later work, he argues that technology in the modern metaphysical tradition tends to “provoke,” “force out,” and “challenge forth” the world, such that the primary intention is to “force” the world to yield energy. Heidegger calls this “the essence of technology,” and it is this essence, he says, that constitutes the “culmination of modern metaphysics.” The philosopher Bruce Foltz describes how this perceptual rupture plays out in Heidegger’s work: “[T]o be’ is ‘to be a resource,’ that is to be ‘in stock,’ in supply, ready for delivery.” To say that modern metaphysics culminates in technology is to say that there are tight and dense entanglements between the modern narrative of separation and technology. The perfectly-straight concrete road cut through a boreal forest is a thought structure “concretely” articulated, and in turn it seeds the imagination with opportunities of how to encounter (or use) that forest in ways unthinkable - and thus unreal - without the road. Likewise, a dam built into a salmon river is abstract thought physically articulated; in turn, the presence of the physical structure gathers the imagination around particularly mechanistic, utilitarian opportunities for encountering the river. Narrative and technology reinforce one another in powerful feedback loops, each contributing their share to revealing the world in a particular manner.”

— Being Salmon, Being Human: Encountering the Wild in Us, and Us in the Wild, by Martin Lee Mueller

mandeville• 5 years ago

Not an expert, but Heidegger on technology (1950s) seems very similar to Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment from 1944. Funny given their differences.

6AA4FD3• 5 years ago

He and Husserl has similar "differences" from my memory. The same for Arendt, I think.

aporetics• 5 years ago

Whatever the full and subtle meaning of “in essence the same” is, Heidegger fails to address the difference in ethical weight between the two phenomena he compares, or to show a path for just political choice.

The first half of the article has some neat summaries of Heidegger’s thought and it’s reception, but I’m alarmed about Blitz’s sudden jump into the ethical and political at this point. I know he’s a political philosopher, but these texts, especially QCT, are about where and how it us possible to experience the world as itself any more. You can’t defer to ethics to adjudicate a crisis of perception. A good reader of the essay would need, at this point, to go back and understand what is meant by the phrase “prepare a free relationship” with technology.

It’s just… odd. This turn by Blitz. He knows grouping these things is a provocation. He knows the provocation is to help us try to grasp the extent to which the fate of things is determined by the “enframing” in which they (may) appear. Then he just appeals to a normie’s average sense of the ethical difference between agriculture and genocide?

Understanding Heidegger on technology (2014)

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