Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power -- how could you live according to this indifference? Living -- is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? (Nietzsche, "On the Prejudices of Philosophers," BGE, section 9)
In a course concerned with computers and values it may seem overly dramatic (at best) to read works by Kant and Nietzsche. Aren't the issues raised by the case studies in Spinello's book more appropriately and easily dealt with using his brief discussions of "frameworks for ethical analysis?" What issues raised by the presence of computers in any area of life could possibly necessitate our wrestling with such difficult texts by such formidable characters? The answer to both of these questions, I'll argue, is a consequence of realizing that, since the start of this course, we've seen how the use of technology doesn't merely raise prospects, problems and issues, but calls into question the fundamental assumptions we make in responding to prospects, problems and issues. We therefore need to read texts that provoke us to think about these assumptions.
In the First Unit of the course, the question of how to evaluate Hans Moravec's vision of a robotic future called into question what we assume to be constitutive of the "human". In the Second Unit, our evaluation of Cherny's vision of a "Next Deal" called into question our basic political commitments concerning our communal lives. Finally, in Unit Three, our considerations about information and computer ethics will call into question our basic assumptions about what morality is (and isn't), and what sort ethical agency we think appropriate in a digital age.
Here, however, we might ask whether there is really anything special about computers, or digital technologies generally, when it comes to issues of morals or politics. Computers have certainly caused a "revolution" in science; but, is it accurate to claim they have had an impact comparable to the Darwinian revolution, which went far beyond the theories and practices of biological science?
At the start of his wonderful essay, "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy," John Dewey wrote:
That the publication of the "Origin of Species " marked an epoch in the development of the natural sciences is well known to the layman. That the combination of the very words origin and species embodied an intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and unreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the "Origin of Species " introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion. (Dewey, "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy", in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays New York: Henry Holt and Company (1910) p. 1)
Two questions:
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, parts 1-3
As a way into the discussion of Nietzsche's text, let's consider your answers to the questions I assigned last time:
Two further questions that might help as well:
For Wednesday:: Read pps. 287-352 in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche (i.e. parts 5-7 of Beyond Good and Evil).