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SDSU Template, Version 11.1 HEIDEGGER AND CYBERNETICS _______________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of San Diego State University _______________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Philosophy _______________ by Alexander J. Misthos Spring 2018 iii Copyright © 2018 by Alexander J. Misthos All Rights Reserved iv The technological-scientific rationalization ruling the present age justifies itself every day more surprisingly by its immense results. But this says nothing about what first grants the possibility of the rational and the irrational. The effect proves the correctness of technological-scientific rationalization. But is the manifest character of what is exhausted by what is demonstrable? Does not the insistence on what is demonstrable block the way to what is? Perhaps there is a thinking that is more sober-minded than the incessant frenzy of rationalization and the intoxicating quality of cybernetics. One might aver that it is precisely this intoxication that is extremely irrational. --Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and The Task of Thinking v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Heidegger and Cybernetics by Alexander J. Misthos Master of Arts in Philosophy San Diego State University, 2018 The following is an attempt to elucidate an often overlooked yet fundamental aspect of Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) philosophy of technology—his thoughts concerning cybernetics. Cybernetics is an interdisciplinary field comprised of the theory of control, communication, and organization in self-regulating systems. Many of the theoretical frameworks upon which general systems theory is built have their origins in cybernetic research, and the two fields are so closely related that one term is often used as a synonym for another. In order to understand the role of cybernetics in Heidegger’s philosophy of technology I will attempt to explain a thesis that he began repeating towards the end of his career—that cybernetics has replaced philosophy in Western civilization. This proposition will have to be understood in the context of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology generally. Once a basis for understanding what Heidegger means by saying that cybernetics has replaced philosophy has been established it will then be possible to turn to the wider Heideggerian corpus in order to assess the extent of Heidegger’s engagement with cybernetics. It will be established that the role of cybernetics in the end of philosophy and the onward march of technology has to be considered of major importance for Heidegger. It will further be demonstrated that Heidegger was engaging with this new science on its own terms by reading his interpretation of cybernetics alongside the texts of the American mathematician and founder of cybernetics Norbert Wiener (1894-1964). It is my hope that in the end I shall have established that Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology constitutes a serious and still relevant engagement with the bleeding edge techno-scientific developments of his day (which is not far removed from our own, and indeed, anticipates many of our contemporary problems with technology). The ultimate goal of this project is to establish that an understanding of Heidegger’s confrontation with cybernetics is critical for a thorough engagement with his philosophy of technology, and that his concerns have only become more prescient as time has passed. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................................v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 SCIENCE, “TECHNOLOGY,” AND TRUTH IN BEING AND TIME ........................6 2 TECHNOLOGY AS METAPHYSICS .......................................................................21 3 CYBERNETICS AND THE END OF PHILOSOPHY...............................................41 4 THE ESSENCE OF GE-STELL, THE END OF PHILOSOPHY, AND THE “SAVING POWER” ....................................................................................................56 5 HEIDEGGER ON CYBERNETICS............................................................................80 6 CONCLUSION: “ONLY A GOD CAN SAVE US” ................................................110 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................118 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank specifically several individuals whose assistance was absolutely essential for me in the completion of this thesis. Firstly, I would like to thank all of my current and former friends and mentors who have assisted me along the way towards my development as a modestly competent thinker and scholar. I would also like to thank my parents for their material support and toleration of my dismally imprudent decision to pursue philosophy academically. To Dr. Peter Atterton, without whose guidance and instruction in the English academic virtues of intellectual temperance, clarity, and rigor in all things, this project would perhaps have come into being as a hoary mess of loose connections and gnomic proclamations, thank you. To Dr. Mark Wheeler, whose mentorship and hyper-active example have encouraged me to believe that it is still possible today to think and to be as an authentic lover of wisdom, whatever that means—thank you. I regret not taking more advantage of the limited time we shared at this institution. To my good friend Brandon K. White, whose thorough instruction in argument, the dialectic, and ontology have been indispensable in steering me towards a less wrong path in the search for truth, thank you. As regards this thesis, your etymological expertise and help in translating certain passages was indispensable. And to all the children—Congratulations 1 INTRODUCTION OUR QUESTIONABLE RELATIONSHIP TO TECHNOLOGY It has become absolutely banal in the present age to remark that society has been profoundly (if not fundamentally) altered by the advance of modern technology. However, just because an idea has become rote does not at all mean that it has been adequately understood. Can philosophy in any capacity have anything to say to us that might be instructive in our present situation? It might seem upon first impression, especially to modern, empirically minded persons, that the answer is no. Such persons might suppose that it would be more proper to appeal to scientists and technicians themselves in order to arrive at a clear understanding of what is happening today with technology. Then again, technical experts are often remiss to indulge too deeply in conversations about the “bigger picture” with what is going on with technology—often out of laudable methodological aversions to overstepping the bounds of what can be said with a high degree of rigor and expertise. All the same, voices have begun to emerge in recent years from prominent enough positions within the technical-scientific community to merit some pause for reflection about our current situation. The rapid pace at which technology and science have been advancing in recent times has generated much high-flying speculation concerning what new possibilities technology will open up for humanity in the near future. Google's Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, is an exemplary champion of this contemporary attitude. In the preface of his bestselling book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005), Kurzweil frames his vision of the future of technology by invoking Arthur C. Clarke's third law, which states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from 2 magic.”1 Kurzweil then immediately goes on to stretch this reference to the most extreme possible limit in appealing to the example of “J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories”2 as examples of “not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only a few decades from now.”3 Kurzweil is on record claiming that Google will be capable of uploading human minds to computer servers sometime around the mid-2040s when he predicts that the “Singularity”—the point when machine intelligence eclipses human intelligence and amplifies in a runaway process of exponential growth—will happen. Kurzweil also believes, if we are to take him at his words in The Singularity is Near that “the ultimate destiny of the Singularity and of the universe” is that: In the aftermath of the Singularity, intelligence, derived from its biological origins in human brains and its technological origins in human activity, will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst. It will achieve this by reorganizing matter and energy to provide an optimal level of computation...to spread out from its origin on Earth...the “dumb” matter and mechanisms of the universe will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence, which will constitute the sixth epoch in the evolution of patterns of information.4 It is easy to dismiss these remarks about human technology giving birth to a divine computer that rearranges the cosmos for the purposes of its sublime computations as exuberant flights of fancy not worthy of serious consideration—and this should be done. Is Kurzweil really a solitary eccentric though? To be sure, his views exist out on an extreme fringe. Even without directly concerning oneself with Singularity theory there
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