By now it's probably clear that, with the sorts of books we're reading and the topics we're discussing, there will never be enough time to address all the good questions raised by the texts or even to air all the arguments and viewpoints clearly and critically. Whether this is a feature or a bug, I think it's a fact about seminars worthy of the name, and my only constant regret is that we aren't able to do justice to the excellent outlines & presentations that David, Aaron and Kyle have provided us so far. So, one thing I would like to propose is that presenters send their notes to the list (or to me and I'll post them on the course web site and link them from the syllabus). This way, when it comes time to think about the writing assignments, it will be easy to revisit not just the texts, your notes and my notes, but your classmates' notes as well.
As for the first paper assignment, you might begin thinking about possible topics now. The basic assignment suggests an analytical essay that takes up a question or an issue that you and at least two of the authors we'll read in the first unit of the course find important. In the essay, you can present the question/issue and its importance, "discuss" how each author addresses it, present your own view(s), and the close with whatever reconciliations, conclusions, or revelations you can derive from what you've written. I am happy to entertain variants on this basic assignments (e.g. including authors we've not discussed in class, writing in a form other than the analytical essay), but I'll want to know what you're planning in advance. Similarly, I am more than happy to discuss possible topics with you, either in my office or by e-mail.
From Moravec' ROBOT to Arendt's The Human Condition
As a way to wrap-up our discussion of Moravec, and let Aaron and Kyle add whatever they like to their presentations, we might ask what connection(s) we can find between ROBOT and Arendt's book written 40 years earlier. Specifically, can we identify assumptions that the authors share or clearly don't share about humanity (e.g. compare they views on a future society where "work" has disappeared), and decide which author most closely reflects our own assumptions?
What is the "Modern" Age?
Arendt's book examines the characteristics of the "human condition" (as opposed to "human nature") in "the modern age" (and "the modern world"). But what, in her view, distinguishes this Age from earlier times?
The Modern Age, or "Modernity", is usually contrasted with the Middle Ages, and a common view is that the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century is contemporary with the rise of Modernity. One of the characteristics of the Modern Age, according to Arendt and others (e.g. Hans Blumenberg in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age), is the value placed on a life of action and making, rather than a life of contemplation. Whereas before the Modern period the kosmos was considered a well-ordered, divinely created whole exemplifying values like harmony, purpose, and perfection, we think of the Modern universe as characterized exclusively by "facts" rather than "values". Although we may use the term "harmony" or "beauty" in modern Astronomy or Astrophysics, the notion is "secularized" and usually defined in the language of science rather than religion. This is only fitting if we believe, unlike Medieval scholars of the kosmos, that knowledge of the world is to be gained not by passive contemplation but by the active reconstruction (through experiment, modeling and simulation) of the world we wish to know. Thus "theory" as the contemplation of truth, is replaced by "theory" as hypothesizing, testing, revision, decision and more hypothesizing, testing, etc. In the last chapter of The Human Condition, Arendt writes:
Where formerly truth had resided in the kind of "theory" that since the Greeks had meant the contemplative glance of the beholder who was concerned with, and received, the reality opening up before him, the question of success took over and the test of theory became a "practical" one -- whether or not it will work. Theory became hypothesis, and the success of the hypothesis became truth. (278)
All this may seem well and good, but there is a question that bothers many philosophers of the Modern Age (including Arendt) concerning "value". When we could look to the Heavens and contemplate "perfection" and "harmony", believing that we were clearly observing expressions of the Divine, we had natural and authoritative measures of value to apply to ourselves and to society. But once we think our theories of the universe are less contemplations of the truth (of divinely-created reality), and more our own self-assertive hypotheses requiring regular revision, framed in ways that reflect our own human purposes, then there is a new sense in which truth seems "man-made." What becomes of our search for "meaning" and "value" in this pursuit? The only "meaning" of this sort of hypothesis-making is as a human-centered means to some human-centered end (i.e. ideas are just means, or instruments, and their truth is determined solely by their usefulness). On p. 156, Arendt writes:
Man, in so far as he is homo faber [man the maker], instrumentalizes, and his instrumentalization implies a degradation of all things into means, their loss of intrinsic and independent value, so that eventually not only the objects of fabrication but also "the earth in general and all forces of nature," ... lose their "value because [they] do no present the reification which comes from work." (Arendt is quoting Kant here)
Are "utility" and "usefulness" enough to ground our ethical judgements? If so, aren't animals and robopets in trouble? What about policies concerning the treatment of "criminal" or "unproductive" or "high maintenance" members of society?
But if "utility" is not enough, what then should replace or supplement it? Arendt's answer is rooted in the Kantian imperative to treat humans as "ends in themselves", but it's not clear that this will help us in our dealings with cyborgs or robots. (Perhaps calling into question the special meaning/value of the "human" might be thought the natural culmination of modernity.)
Arendt's The Human Condition, Prologue
Here are some questions to help us work our way into Arendt's text:
Arendt's The Human Condition, Chapter 1
More questions:
Arendt's The Human Condition, Chapter 2
Arendt gives an analysis of the private and public realms in the ancient world, suggesting important differences between what these realms involved for ancients and moderns. She then talks about the rise of the "social", against which she says both the public and the private have been "incapable of defending themselves". What is she talking about and could it be stated more clearly/simply?
With the time remaining, let's go through the sections of chapter 2, and see which were the most informative, interesting, puzzling or difficult.
For Next Time:: Read pp. 79-174 of The Human Condition, and as much of chapter 5 as you can.