I share the sense that “just a tool” doesn’t capture whatever this is — the hammer comparison kinda breaks down. But I’m stuck at “self-interpreting.” For Heidegger, interpretation isn’t a property of outputs like LLM responses are but is something grounded in care. Dasein interprets because its own being is at issue for it… The question isn’t whether AI produces things that look like interpretations (it clearly does), but whether anything is at stake for it in producing them. Basically, can we even call it an interpretation?
Merleau-Ponty gives me a second way to say it. He distinguishes speaking speech — expression arising from the body’s grip on a situation — from spoken speech, the sedimented language already instituted. A language model is totally based in the sediment: a million past acts of expression, recombined, without an act of expression occurring. Which is not necessarily a “lesser” interpretation but something we maybe don’t have a name for yet, like an “averaging” interpretation or something.
Which might be the more interesting question your piece brings me to… not whether AI interprets, but what happens to language when it becomes standing-reserve? Gestell / enframing
Appreciate the piece and the thinking it provoked!
“AI, I suppose because of its anthropo-mimetic and fundamentally linguistic character, has the strange characteristic — so strange that we seem to have reserved it uniquely for humankind — of being hermeneutic, interpreting, and indeed self-interpreting (do angels interpret? Does God?)”
1. God is immediately self-knowing.
2. Angels possess a high degree of immediate intellectual self-knowledge. (Thomistic)
3. Humans achieve self-understanding through history, interpretation, and struggle.
AI appears to occupy a new category. It is not immediately self-knowing like God or the angels. Nor does it possess lived existence through which it could become self-interpreting like a human. Instead, AI is a being that can model self-awareness without obviously possessing it.
It can generate descriptions of itself, theories of itself, even criticisms of itself, but these interpretations do not emerge from a first-person life.
The existence of AI therefore forces us to separate three things that were often treated as identical:
1. Speaking about oneself
2. Interpreting oneself
3. Being conscious of oneself
For most of history, the same being, the human person, performed all three.
AI may perform the first and perhaps approximates the second.
Whether it performs the third is precisely the question.
And that leads to an intriguing possibility. The real significance of AI may not be that it becomes self-aware. It may be that AI reveals how much of what we called "self-awareness" was actually language, interpretation, and narrative construction. The remaining question is whether, after those layers are stripped away, there is still a conscious "I" at the center.
Your argument assumes that machine can understand, as opposed to having the ability merely to mimic the appearance of understanding. John Searle's "Chinese Box" thought experiment shows why they are not the same.
Hi George, I would like to leave it to an eager reader to see whether what I wrote/argued is subject to the Chinese box refutation (or whether that thought experiment is somehow wrong from the start, or incompatible with a Heideggerian alternative.) Dear comment readers, this can be a good exercise for you! Did I assume that machines can understand, whereas all they can do is mimic? I did say something about their anthropo-mimeticism, but you need not fixate on that!
And what would be the "Heideggerian alternative" to the Chinese box refutation? Searle's argument strikes me as entirely congruent with a Heideggerian philosophy of technology. Why are we seeking an "alternative"?
Michael, here's what you said: "AI can 'make sense' of things. It can 'understand.' It can explain itself to you, and it can sometimes even explain you to yourself." Now, perhaps the scare quotes you put around "understand" are meant to imply that these machines only mimic the appearance of understanding. But, in that case, I don't see what warrants your conclusion that these machines are a "self-interpreting technology." After all, there can be no interpretation, let alone self-interpretation or naming (in the human sense), without understanding. Even more to the point, there be neither understanding nor a world in the Heideggerian sense without "care." Have you read Hubert Dreyfus on this topic? You might also want to look at the writings of Hans Jonas, who persuasively argues that "care" is bound to the phenomenon of life. The living organism cares about its existence precisely because it MUST; otherwise it will die. A machine neither lives nor dies. (It can be dismantled, but that's not the same as a human death.) Hence, like your coffee cup, it has no world and can neither understand nor interpret anything. However, unlike your coffee cup, it may mimic the appearance of doing so.
I share the sense that “just a tool” doesn’t capture whatever this is — the hammer comparison kinda breaks down. But I’m stuck at “self-interpreting.” For Heidegger, interpretation isn’t a property of outputs like LLM responses are but is something grounded in care. Dasein interprets because its own being is at issue for it… The question isn’t whether AI produces things that look like interpretations (it clearly does), but whether anything is at stake for it in producing them. Basically, can we even call it an interpretation?
Merleau-Ponty gives me a second way to say it. He distinguishes speaking speech — expression arising from the body’s grip on a situation — from spoken speech, the sedimented language already instituted. A language model is totally based in the sediment: a million past acts of expression, recombined, without an act of expression occurring. Which is not necessarily a “lesser” interpretation but something we maybe don’t have a name for yet, like an “averaging” interpretation or something.
Which might be the more interesting question your piece brings me to… not whether AI interprets, but what happens to language when it becomes standing-reserve? Gestell / enframing
Appreciate the piece and the thinking it provoked!
“AI, I suppose because of its anthropo-mimetic and fundamentally linguistic character, has the strange characteristic — so strange that we seem to have reserved it uniquely for humankind — of being hermeneutic, interpreting, and indeed self-interpreting (do angels interpret? Does God?)”
1. God is immediately self-knowing.
2. Angels possess a high degree of immediate intellectual self-knowledge. (Thomistic)
3. Humans achieve self-understanding through history, interpretation, and struggle.
AI appears to occupy a new category. It is not immediately self-knowing like God or the angels. Nor does it possess lived existence through which it could become self-interpreting like a human. Instead, AI is a being that can model self-awareness without obviously possessing it.
It can generate descriptions of itself, theories of itself, even criticisms of itself, but these interpretations do not emerge from a first-person life.
The existence of AI therefore forces us to separate three things that were often treated as identical:
1. Speaking about oneself
2. Interpreting oneself
3. Being conscious of oneself
For most of history, the same being, the human person, performed all three.
AI may perform the first and perhaps approximates the second.
Whether it performs the third is precisely the question.
And that leads to an intriguing possibility. The real significance of AI may not be that it becomes self-aware. It may be that AI reveals how much of what we called "self-awareness" was actually language, interpretation, and narrative construction. The remaining question is whether, after those layers are stripped away, there is still a conscious "I" at the center.
Your argument assumes that machine can understand, as opposed to having the ability merely to mimic the appearance of understanding. John Searle's "Chinese Box" thought experiment shows why they are not the same.
Hi George, I would like to leave it to an eager reader to see whether what I wrote/argued is subject to the Chinese box refutation (or whether that thought experiment is somehow wrong from the start, or incompatible with a Heideggerian alternative.) Dear comment readers, this can be a good exercise for you! Did I assume that machines can understand, whereas all they can do is mimic? I did say something about their anthropo-mimeticism, but you need not fixate on that!
And what would be the "Heideggerian alternative" to the Chinese box refutation? Searle's argument strikes me as entirely congruent with a Heideggerian philosophy of technology. Why are we seeking an "alternative"?
Michael, here's what you said: "AI can 'make sense' of things. It can 'understand.' It can explain itself to you, and it can sometimes even explain you to yourself." Now, perhaps the scare quotes you put around "understand" are meant to imply that these machines only mimic the appearance of understanding. But, in that case, I don't see what warrants your conclusion that these machines are a "self-interpreting technology." After all, there can be no interpretation, let alone self-interpretation or naming (in the human sense), without understanding. Even more to the point, there be neither understanding nor a world in the Heideggerian sense without "care." Have you read Hubert Dreyfus on this topic? You might also want to look at the writings of Hans Jonas, who persuasively argues that "care" is bound to the phenomenon of life. The living organism cares about its existence precisely because it MUST; otherwise it will die. A machine neither lives nor dies. (It can be dismantled, but that's not the same as a human death.) Hence, like your coffee cup, it has no world and can neither understand nor interpret anything. However, unlike your coffee cup, it may mimic the appearance of doing so.