Nope i certainly don’t know what I’m doing.  I tried out the “Non-linear” video editor Edius 5 and found that just like the Pinnacle Studio 14 Hd it proved to be much to frustrating and cryptic to deal with.   Perhaps Sony Vegas has spoiled it for me but that program seems so intuitive.  It’s just so easy to drag and drop music and sound, still and motion pictures all in a a program that doesn’t tax my system.  Perhaps this is why most films really suck.  It’s just to technical.  I can’t imagine Proust or Kafka wasting their time setting type or making paper.  I guess I have a theory about art that doesn’t stress technique.  I mean it’s all technique in a way but the striving for technical polish destroys the creation.  A good example is rock music. Technically great musicians don’t make compelling music they make impressive music.  A Micheal Bay or a Tony Scott film may look nice but since the creator’s purpose is to impress it ends up just being a pointless exercise.  Of course I’ve certainly seen the other side of it where some high concept “arteest” who has nothing to say just jumbles some crap together and gets a patron.  I wonder how deep these artists actually are?  How can people without any curiosity, raised on mass media actually say anything worth hearing.  But that’s probably too harsh I mean I love a cartoon like the Family Guy because it seems honest somehow.  In the end it’s vapid and pointless but at the same time it brings all the other mass media schtick into perspective.  That’s why it’s so great but at the same time it is just pointing out how little compelling “entertainment” there is available.

One more thing…We live In New Times… I can freely listen to all this highbrow stuff without succumbing to any rote paths.  I can combine anything I want, I have  all the capabilities at my fingertips to create a new cinema with the  depth of great literature.  This is the kind of thing that will never be done by large groups of people with “careers” in art.  It will only come from those who somehow comfortably exist outside of these straitjackets.  If your the kind of person who thinks that NPR or PBS is in anyway intelligent or interesting you just are not there yet.  At some point I thought that too but it was a mistake and if you don’t get out soon you will find your self dying in a tiny little world which you could have transcended if only you had the courage , anger or depression to see what you were actually involved in.

It’s all too much to talk about.  I can feel this line of thought begin to fray.  I’ve spent the last few years not looking at TV except for the Cartoons and since what’s on TV is their major subject I am beginning to lose the references.  Personally I like to surround myself with philosophy lectures and audiobooks.  Since these things can be obtained for free I just play them in the back round all day long.  Hubert Dreyfus, Rick Roderick, Robert Solomon and Slavoj Žižek have hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio and video available that actually takes your head out of your ass.  This kind of serious thought is much more fun to engage and there is absolutely none of it on the mass media.  It’s strange just how many hours of crap is produced every year and there is not one show or documentary or drama with anything even approaching the kinds of viewpoints and Ideas that are talked about in all of these guys lectures.  Of course listening to it is not something anyone who has a vested interest in the current culture could do without destroying their opinion of the life they have led, especially if they have a good job or some religious prejudice. However the vastness of the space opened up by them makes the current tiny little worlds most people live in seem like  a complete waste.

One quick example would be a person who has spent their life espousing fiscal responsibility and good honest hard work.  The don’t make waves and they are really dedicated to their work.  What happens to a person like that? Well in today’s culture they end up alone in a nursing home wondering what exactly it is they accomplished.  Perhaps they were a banker who finally realizes that all the money they manipulated suddenly dissappeared before their eyes or maybe they are a minister who despite their best efforts was only able to pretend to believed in God all the while actually living in fear.

Someone who spends their life working retail or food service  don’t actually accomplish as much in their whole lives as a construction worker, nurses aid or garbage man does everyday. These phantom worlds are the province of the vast majority of people.  Philosophy and actual art challenges a person to drop out of this society because it does not go anywhere and it never will.  The mass Media is a huge consensual penal colony.

Ok now I forgot what I was talking about.  Oh yeah.  I want to use Sony Vegas but I screwed up the installation and I need to reinstall my operating system before I can use it.  I also need to figure out how to use the Quick-time .mov format in it since that’s what the canon 7d put’s out.  I wait to get this tripod it’s made of aluminum and can hold 11 pounds!! I also have a flash coming and a 16 gig flash card but the most important thing is a wide angle lens which is really hard to come by with the APS-C sensored camera’s( i had to get a Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens) unless your willing to spend quite a bit of money.

Here is the last Film Short I made (before I got the 7D)

Introduction: This encounter begins with an idea, a “bump,” from Steve Eskow. In an email message on Sep. 2, he referred me to Kevin Carey’s “College for $99 a Month: The Next Generation of Online Education Could Be Great for Students—and Catastrophic for Universities” (Washington Monthly, Sep./Oct. 2009). Carey is policy director of Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C. Please participate in this encounter by posting a comment. I’ll append most or all of the comments to this page as they’re published. -js

Harry Keller, editor, science education, on 3 Sep. 2009, 4:00AM: This article engendered so many thoughts that I cannot begin to write them all. Note the unfair evaluation criteria; compare with online vs. traditonal A.P. science courses. The disruptive innovation thread is large. What if many StraighterLine clones sprung up if regulatory walls were lowered, and many had lower standards — just like today’s colleges. The social benefits to students of college have been ignored in the article. How much of the tutoring and even teaching will be outsourced offshore? Will the $99 per month be sustainable as a business model? StraighterLine only offers 11 courses now, all oriented to business students; when will they be able to offer degrees? Who will support research in renaissance french pottery <big grin> if universities have to downsize? Will future college professors be able to retire on the job until they really retire as some do today? The protesting professors clearly know on which side their bread is buttered and are reacting to a threat rather than proposing rational solutions to impending change. What will happen to low-enrollment courses; will they be aggregated across states or even nations to keep them viable? Who will teach a course that only provides a small slice of $99 per student? How large will the student load per instructor be? Is the ivory-tower model dying? How will drama and science be taught? For online courses, the major costs are the design of the course (amortizable) and the ongoing cost of the instructor. Interestingly, each corporate online provider must design courses anew. Smaller providers, such as small states, purchase the curricula and resell them packaged with one of their instructors.

And so it goes. This concept goes far beyond the use of “clickers” and “smart” boards in bringing technology to education.

The topic may be too large for us to cover, but if we don’t try, we won’t know for sure.

Steve Eskow, editor, hybrid vs. virtual issues, on 3 Sep. 2009, 7:14AM: Harry refers to the often-cited “social benefits” of the walled university. Apparently something of educational importance happens when the the 300 students and the lecturer and the images on the screen are together in the lecture hall in real time. Or when the 30 students and the graduate student “discuss” the lecture in real time in a 600-square feet classroom.

I wish someone in our group with institutional library privileges could get us two articles by Jerry Farber: “The Third Circle; On Education and Distance Learning” and “Teaching and Presence.”

Farber’s first circle is “measurable competence.” That’s what we get in all those studies that come out, it almost seems, every other day. Those “NSD” studies.

The second circle contains those competences that aren’t readily measurable.

And the third circle contains those “benefits” that Harry mentions: the profound educational benefits that Farber and so many other attribute to the face-to-face situation.

The philosophic position behind this “third circle” is often called “the metaphysics of presence,” and this matter of the reality or the mythology of “presence” has, I think, been underreported in the literature of online and mediated and distance learning. ETC could do something about that.

Jacques Derrida wrote much–and densely–about “the metaphysics of presence.” About “logocentrism,” and the power of the Word when present, and , importantly for proponents of mediated instruction, on “phonocentrism,” the assumed differences in impact and meaning of the spoken and the written word.

Perhaps Farber’s articles could help us get a modest shared background on this matter of “presence,” and we might get help from folks in philosophy on Heidegger and Derrida and the implications of “the metaphysics of presence” for the future of online learning.

Harry Keller (9.3.09, 7:22AM): The social benefits happen outside of the classroom. People make lifelong friends and set up future business relationships. They join clubs that foster success after graduation. I would never suggest (at least from my personal experience) any social benefits from sitting in a classroom.

Steve Eskow, (9.3.09, 7:32AM): Harry is not talking, then, about “learning” as the curriculum defines it, but about “social capital.” About the so-called “extra-curriculum.”

(When he was President of Princeton Woodrow Wilson wrote extensively about what he called student excitement and involvement in the “sideshows” and their lack of of interest in “the main tent”: the classroom and the curriculum.

Others here and everywhere attribute important learning enhancement and benefits from “presence”: from the living word, from the face-to-faceness of the classroom as opposed to what they see as the “distance” imposed by distance learning: the lack of this almost mystical “presence.”

Farber is one strong voice speaking for this “presence.” Hubert Dreyfus is another.

I don’t think the issue has found its way into distance learning circles, and it’s at the very center of our work, and yet largely unrecognized and unremarked.

Harry Keller (9.3.09, 8:26AM): Regarding “presence”:

1. I don’t see it. Except for the very unusual show types, having a prof in the room with you gains little or nothing.

2. It’s more useful for the instructor who can gauge the impact of what’s going on by the faces (rapt or blank stares or whatever). Tools available today to online instructors can do even better than face-reading, however.

3. I often had the person who wrote the book (and in one case was writing it daily) giving the lectures. The only advantage to the class was being able to ask questions, but with 180 students, the opportunities to do so were small. Online is better in that respect.

4. Seeing professors out of their element gives little idea of what they really do. However, every first-year student cannot visit the professors as they’re working.

5. Many online students have remarked that they’re cowed in traditional classes but can open up and become involved in online classes.

Persons are important; presence is not. It will be a long time before a real, live instructor can be replaced by a machine. However, some of the work traditionally done by instructors can now be done by machines so that teaching becomes more of a mentoring or facilitating job. It becomes elevated to a real person skill.

Steve Eskow, (9.3.09, 8:49AM): Harry, it seems increasingly clear to me that many of us heavily involved in mediated instruction are unfamiliar with the large and important literature on this matter of “presence” and “the metaphysics of presence,” and unaware of the role it plays in philosophy and practice–and, importantly for our work, in the serious resistance to distance learning.

An interesting and intricate example of the power of presence thesis is MIT: hardly an enemy of technology and technology-enhanced learning. MIT is increasingly technologizing its instruction–but on campus. As far as I know, complee resistance to distance learning for its students. All MIT credit instruction, as far as I know, requires that you be “present.” On the other hand, distance learning students around the world can make arrangements to access the4 MIT “i-labs” program: lab instruction online.

Hubert Dreyfus is a philosopher who has written such important books as WHAT COMPUTERS CAN’T DO. His book ON THE INTERNET is a serious critique of mediated instruction built around the “presence” thesis.

If we want to engage the important critics of distance learning we need to know more about their position and deep concerns. That means, I think, taking their arguments seriously and engaging with them.

Farber’s articles, and Dreyfus’ ON THE INTERNET would give us a start in developing a common background on the “presence” thesis.

Or: we should know more about it before we attack. It’s serious, substantial stuff–not just anti-technology claptrap.

Harry Keller (9.3.09, 10:08AM): I’d like to see the gloves come off in the discussion on this topic. Although our view of the future is hazy and dark, we can consider the effects of various futures.

Replacing the sage on the stage with the net mentor has to be a positive step. Loss of a place (secondary school or college) where people gather together ostensibly to learn but really have learning as the secondary purpose, will have repercussions. What are they? Where do those sports teams go? Will the academic part of a college evaporate leaving behind a sports program as its residue? I’m guessing that some alums wouldn’t mind, but the national fraternities and sororities will. Can they have virtual counterparts?

If students can get high school diplomas and college degrees online, they’ll be at home much more putting more of a burden on the parents. Actually going to college exposes many students to other regions and other cultures. When I went to graduate school in New York City, I had never been East of the Mississippi or ridden on a subway or been to a coffee house. I saw a woman’s purse snatched right across the street from me. I saw Jackie Kennedy going to my own drugstore. I saw Robert Preston walking to a rehearsal on a nearly empty Broadway early in the morning. I met Tom Clancy (of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy …) in a bar once. I saw Gene Kruppa practicing his drums in a nightclub in the middle of the day. All of this stuff has nothing to do with classes. It’s the other part of your education.

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface here. The implications of StraighterLine are very very far-reaching as are those of the entire online movement.

I have about given up on remembering all that I read (this is one of the reasons I started this blog, so I can actually keep track of my reading), so here I’ll just write about what was apparently most memorable.

I am an auditor and not just a lector, so I’ll should note that I listened to every Ken Myers (of Mars Hill Audio: www.marshillaudio.org) lecture I could find this summer, probably somewhere around ten or more, and those gave me an enormous range of things to think about, besides contributing to my variegated reading. Of particular import and influence was Myers’ general theory of culture, which he divides into six components, the last three of which I find most interesting (just google “Ken Myers lecture” and you find out what I’m talking about) as they deal with categories likes sensibility and “metaphysical orientation.” Myers draws on but goes far beyond Berger’s notion of a plausiblity structure and Geertz’s semiotic theory of culture, all of which are helpful. This is  one reason why Myers is so good, I think: his definition of culture incorporates the best insights of anthropology, sociology, and other fields but is not limited to any of them, and thus he actually does manage to categorize and describe just about every facet of cultural life, and therefore makes it possible to consciously isolate and analyze things like institutions, cultural artifacts, aesthetic sensibilities, etc.

The other major influence of Myers’ thought on me, which began prior to this summer but was reinforced by listening to him again, is his wholistic conception of discipleship as literally cultivating people Christianly; that is, inducting them into a distinctively Christian culture, which, given his conception of culture, extends far beyond the normal objects of discipleship: beliefs and behaviors. I have come more and more to regard these not as shallow or unimportant but as drastically misinterpreted if they are not set within the kind of  framework Myers brings out under his idea of culture.  This is the weakness, which Myers gently alludes to, of “worldview” approaches, which focus on beliefs and their systemic relationships in ways that, when presented without qualification, are not only misleading but fundamentally distorting in the picture of beliefs’ roles in our lives.

I’m afraid I’m beginning to remember things I read, and there’s simply too much to write about; I’d never get to writing about what I read today or yesterday, about which I’ll probably have to write tomorrow or Saturday. Here are some highlights: I read Isaiah Berlin’s essay on The Science and the Humanities (the title is somewhat different than that), which was the best piece I’ve ever read on the topic. Berlin’s discussion of Vico was deeply moving, for it took me back to my discovery of Berlin as a Freshman in college, as well as to my discovery of the conception of history that has had such a deep impact on philosophy, theology, and culture through the Germans. Vico’s conception of history, when once understood, seems indisputably correct in its broad outlines, and it shows why scientism must, in all forms, fail. Incidentally, the influence of Vico/Herder/Berlin on Charles Taylor’s work is obvious when one reads Berlin’s essays on Vico and Herder. Among the things that struck me when reading the essay was how few people apparently understand and embrace the conception of history one finds in Vico and the German tradition; if people truly understood history, a plethora of popular and common ideas would be instantly unbelievable or at least grossly (and deservedly) implausible. Yet, as Gadamer rightly notes in Truth and Method, understanding history requires the cultivation of what, for lack of a better concept, one can call a historical faculty, and just as people with no taste are blind and deaf to beauty and harmony, so too people who lack a cultivated sense of history lack all feeling for the weight of the past, it’s enormous burdens and gifts, its obligations and limitations, and therefore they have no conception of the present either. Theirs’ is a kind of parodic version of God’s “eternal now.” As Lewis noted, since we can’t compare the present to the future, we must compare it to the past. Yet, if we don’t know the past, and therefore have nothing against which to contrast the present, how can the present possibly be a meaningful category? Quite plainly it cannot. And this is, for example, what Theodore Dalrymple has written about in his experience with the underclass: they have no sense of history, and therefore no real substantial sense of the present.

I read much else, but the last thing I’ll mention, at least for now, is Hubert Dreyfus’s ”On the Internet,” a brilliant and profound little book that everyone ought to read, both for its insights about the internet and more importantly for its insights about what it means to be embodied. It’s the best example of the power of phenomenological analysis that I”ve ever seen. No mystical, arcane language. Just straightforward by profound analysis of the implications of embodiment and the limitations of disembodied presence. In this context, Dreyfus proves why Distance Learning, as its currently practiced, can never work well, and for that reason alone everyone in education ought to read the book. Dreyfus also offers a lucid description of skill-aquisition and the different phases that lead from being a novice to a master/expert, and this is especially helpful for those who have never read similar treatments in people like Polanyi.

Well, I suppose I’ll have to do a third post on the summer reading, as there are some other important books I want to mention before I plunge into my most recent reading.

El sitio de la Red Filosófica del Uruguay, como siempre,
es…
http://filosofiauruguaya.ning.com

En estos días el ritmo de publicación en Red Filosófica ha sido
vertiginoso…los últimos textos publicados han sido…

La verdad es opaca (por Guillermo Uría) una reflexión que apunta a la necesidad
de anular en el proximo plebiscito uruguayo la Ley que hizo impunes a los
crimenes dictatoriales.

Ambición Prometeica (Fernando Gutierrez) Sobre los excesos científicos.

Algunas reflexiones sobre la doctrina constructivista de Joaquín Torres García
(por Claudia Gabriela Vázquez Reinaldo)

Hubert Dreyfus, siniestro ludita. (Jethro Masís, en torno a la inteligencia
artificial)

Las raices de los pueblos (De Daniel Ruiz)

Educar para superar la pobreza: una mentira idealista-conservadora.(por Andrés
Núñez Leites)

Impúdico(por la escritora Rita Gardellini)

Pensamiento artiguista en el siglo XXI (por Daniel Ruiz, 1era y 2da parte)

Una acusación canallesca (reflexiones de Daniel Rodriguez frente al neoimperio)

Ciencia-contenedor (por Ricardo Viscardi)

Declaración de la Cuarta Cumbre Mundial de los Pueblos Indígenas (texto agregado
por Daniel Ruiz)

La cultura occidental(Elaine Castro denuncia el etnocentrismo)

Contribución a una ontología digital (por el filósofo Rafael Capurro)

Siete puñales en el corazón de América(un texto de Fidel Castro introducido por
Daniel Ruiz que generó interesante polémica)

Pájaros Prohibidos (un texto de Eduardo Galeano introducido por la estudiante
Natasha Tissera)

Sobre la Red Filosófica del Uruguay(Alotrópico nos invita a pensar en la propia
Red)

Uruguay no produce mas genio??? (Elaine Castro se pregunta acerca de la
decadencia cultural del Uruguay)

Descristianización a lo Figari Latreaumont (por Fernando Gutierrez)

La justicia en Nietzsche: algunas reflexiones (por Edgar Salazar Cano)

Borges en su laberinto (por Alicia Poderti, un paralelismo entre el universo
borgiano y la internet)

Dogma y libertad (por el filósofo chileno Arturo Ruiz)

Saludos, Fernando Gutierrez

Uno de los más importantes representantes de la recepción de la fenomenología y del pensamiento de Heidegger en el mundo anglosajón es el filósofo Hubert Dreyfus. Su apropiación de la tradición fenomenólogica lo han llevado a debates sobre la posibilidad de la inteligencia artificial.

Lo primero que voy a compartir es un video donde Dreyfus discute los aportes de Heidegger y Husserl con Bryan Magee. Son cinco partes:

Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl and Heidegger: Section 1

Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl and Heidegger: Section 2

Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl and Heidegger: Section 3

Lo segundo que tenemos son los podcasts de las clases que Dreyfus dictó en la Universidad de Berkeley entre el 1007 y  2008 sobre Ser y tiempo.

Philosophy 185 Heidegger (Fall 2007)

Philosophy 189 Heideggers Being and Time, Division II (Summer 2008)

Más allá de que estemos o no de acuerdo con la interpretación de Dreyfus, creo que podría ser llegar a ser, eventualmente, una buena introducción (o primera aproximación) para alguien que no tenga mucha formación en filosofía o fenomenología. No soy personalmente un gran fan o amigo de los companions o libros complementarios para iniciar la lectura, pero creo que escuchar un par de audios o ver un par de videos podría generar, quizá, algo de interés. Lo único que hay que tener en cuenta es que quizá no sea una lectura muy “pura” o “tradicional”. Pero, repito, creo que hacer una aproximación más “prosaica” (sobre todo en la sección primera) puede servir de primera entrada para luego ahondar, después, en la problemática ontológica fundamental, y su relación con el tiempo.

The Internet is a fascinating beast: through it we are admitted entrance to and information on nearly everything imaginable.
And yet, inherent within this great resource come great risks. On the Internet by Hubert Dreyfus contains a helpful analysis of both the advantages and the perils of the Internet.

Dreyfus touches on a hallmark of the postmodern age: the plurality and relativity of information and authority.

He notes, “There are no hierarchies; everything is linked to everything else on a single level.”  In this pluralistic setting, there is no authority, no foundational point of reference. And in return, individuals today are, “not interested in collecting what is significant but in connecting to as wide a web of information as possible.”
Dreyfus delineates between Data Retrieval and Information Retrieval, specific and general relevance axioms, and information retrieval based on recall versus precision; all this is to simply re-emphasize the postmodern nature of the Internet as it affords opportunity in information access while carrying an inherent risk of rendering all information relative

Such relativity is treated with disdain by Soren Kierkegaard, who reveals the dangers inherent within the Internet.

Using Kierkegaard’s criticism of “The Crowd” and, “The Public”, one can see the perils presented by abstract reasoning apart from any actual involvement or commitment. The Internet represents the same sort of aberration Kierkegaard argued against when he criticized the press and coffeehouses for becoming hotbeds of discussion that led to nothing little else than more discussion.
The Internet has the potential to act in the same way the coffeehouses did 300 years ago: it provides a space for people to offer unmediated (and sometimes uneducated) opinions without any involvement or sense of consequences. The Internet encourages a lack of commitment in the same space as a presence of opinion. As a result, there is a leveling due to endless reflection.

Individuals in this context seek ultimate truth by pursuing every possible avenue, but do so indefinitely to an infinite regress. There is never an answer, but always room for more speculation.

Such are hallmark characteristics of postmodernity: infinite speculation of every possible avenue without commitment to one single course of action.

Implicit herein, says Kierkegaard, is nihilism. The leveling means there is nowhere to go: relevance and significance have disappeared in favor of relativity and pluralism.

Soundtrack contains samples of

one of Hubert Dreyfus’s Heidegger Section 2 lectures

a portion of sound from an old government sponsored radio show about mental illness called the Tenth Man (Available on the internet archive.)

The dead bird was given to the family by the cat.

I painted all the logs and made the pond myself.

I cut window in the shed and decorated the inside with pages out of The Molecular Biology of the Cell(3rd Edition?)

I made the soundtrack on Sound forge

Using sounds I got by heavily treating some really tiny pieces of some Bartok String Quartet

The Built to Spill on the soundtrack was ambient and recorded by the camera in mono

I edited the film using Sony Vegas

I used Photomatix 3.1 for the HDR tonemapping

I used Photoshop CS4 to make the titles

The highest res version(1920X1200) looks much better but is much to large to upload

All my films from here on out will be mixed in 5.1 surround sound

]]> http://corporature.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/video-hubert-dreyfus-discusses-embodiment/ Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:39:52 +0000 bryannelson http://corporature.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/video-hubert-dreyfus-discusses-embodiment/

This is not exactly the most engaging production, but the discussion does span a wide variety of issues related to embodiment.

Hubert Dreyfus discusses notions of embodiment throughout the history of philosophy, particularly in relation to the philosophy of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, and relates it to modern research within Artificial Intelligence and the Internet.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Hubert Dreyfus wrote a book in the 1970s, called What Computers Can’t Do, which is a really interesting counterpoint to the early optimism of researchers in artificial intelligence in that time period. In brief, Dreyfus takes a poop on the hopes and dreams of all computer scientists and states in an extremely final way that a computer program will never simulate the human mind. He makes many good points that are worth exploring, however, he doesn’t want to leave the discussion open at all. I found his discussion on the nature of abstractions, on what it means to be “real”, and on the categorization of “information” (whatever that is) to be very interesting. I don’t want to be pushy, but Buddhist ideas show up all over the place in these very (super-)cerebral discussions of reality, and many of the points made mirror the world that Buddhism describes; the interdependence of all things is probably the most important tenet of Buddhism, and the most ubiquitous in such non-Buddhist, scientific literature. Not that I’ve read that much.

Without any more ranting, there are a couple cool things I wanted to…paraphrase from the book. First, the author describes how our perceptions shape the “reality” of the physical world. Consider a glass of water and a glass of milk. Imagine drinking the glass of water with the intention of doing just that. You’ll taste water. Now imagine putting down the water, accidentally picking up the glass of milk, and drinking the glass of milk with the intention of drinking the glass of water. If you’re not paying attention (or intention), and get a mouthful of milk expecting water, the perceived taste is something not quite water and not quite milk, something in between but not quite either. Perhaps it’s the “raw input”, I don’t really know.  But it would seem that your preconceptions of the taste of water have affected your perceptions of the taste of water.

Second, Dreyfus provides at the end of his book analogous problems and activities that help us categorize the kinds of problems that humans and computer programs face and how difficult they are. The table looks like this:

Of course, to make full sense of this table, reading the book may be necessary. Also, a degree in philosophy, cognitive science and/or computer science would also be helpful. I can cut out the tough stuff and summarize, though.

In terms of philosophy, this table shows the apparent difficulty in getting the global, semantic interpretation of a situation without actually having previously been in the situation (i.e. being a human in the universe). This seems to be a paradox, the seemingly insurmountable problem of providing a program with enough rules to build up new rules for itself in an infinite hierarchy (consider creating a fundamental set of rules for solving problems, then creating rules for when and how to use those rules, then creating rules for when and how to use those rules, and so on ad infinitum).

In terms of cognitive science, this table shows the problem of providing a computer program with what we would call “insight”, “intuition”, “understanding”, or “perception” of an arbitrary input (from the domain of the physical world). The methodical, algorithmic ways of solving problems take so long, and we humans don’t seem to do that when we, for example, see a “strong” position as opposed to a “weak” position on a chess board. Checking each possible combination of moves becomes outrageously computationally expensive very quickly; someone smart once said that we live in a world full of probabilistic decisions, and I bet that’s closer to how we actually do it.

In terms of computer science, this table shows from left to right the increasing complexity of each type of problem, from sub-polynomial time algorithms to polynomial time algorithms to more complex heuristics (a heuristic can be considered an algorithm for learning how to learn), and beyond that, we don’t really know how to solve the problem in the way that a human seems to solve it (with intuition). That’s what the “None” is for in the table (my emphasis).

The author points out that we actually start out as human beings in area IV on the table, then we learn how to do things in areas I, II, and III in sequence, “just as natural language is prior to mathematics” (Dreyfus 294). Curiouser and curiouser.

That’s all I have to say about that. I like it. I hope I’ve inspired everyone to take up a career in theoretical computer science.

Also, just want to repeat that a lot of this is paraphrased from Dreyfus’s book, so props to him.

Fast Eyes

Talk about amazing. The other day I turned on my computer. I got on the Internet, went to a webpage, sat there, put on my glasses…there was a lot of text swimming before my eyes…but I sat there and I read the whole thing! I read it slowly; I read it carefully; I highlighted portions of the text using Diigo; I made some notes (Diigo again). I read it through a second time: an article that was first published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and now is in residence on the Web.

Of course, I was also IMing, and twittering, and blogging and wikiing, and I had some music in the background—Moby—and I was playing solitaire, and answering questions on Yahoo, and working on a vocabulary game called Free Rice—but my primary focus was on this article by Mark Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University, called Online literacy is a Lesser Kind. Might be interesting, I thought.  Oh, and I had Photoshop going, just to fool around with when I was bored. I’m thinking of creating an avatar.

The article did not start off auspiciously. Referencing Jacob Nielsen, the guru of web usability, usually puts me off. He can be a little pompous. And as I glanced down the page his name jumped up at me. I was tempted just to scan and move on, but I am interested in literacy and Professor Bauerlein should have some interesting points to make.  

So, Jacob Nielsen. I read on.  It seems he’s done this study on the way people ‘read’ material on the Internet, testing some 200 plus people, and it turns out the vast majority of them don’t read at all. Not line by line, word for word anyway. Rather, they scan the page looking at the text in an F pattern: read across the top, move your eyes halfway down the page, go across again, and then zip to the bottom.

‘F’ Mr. Nielsen opines, ‘for fast.’

One is tempted to use another ‘f’ word here, but this is a family oriented blog.

Now I wish I could say, ‘Jacob Nielsen, you’re dead wrong about this,’ but the F-pattern sort of rings a bell. That probably is how I ‘read’ most web pages. One doesn’t have all day, after all.

The problem, Professor Bauerlein points out, is that most schools are going under the assumption that the computer and the Internet are suitable venues for serious reading. They think that students can and will use the Internet to ponder such things as Heidegger’s ontic- ontological distinction or to ‘plow’ through Middlemarch, and your average student is just not going to do this. Educators think they can use the computer for serious learning outside the classroom, for research, reading assignments and the like—and that just ain’t gonna happen—because today’s students, before they even get to the classroom, have been trained by thousands of hours of non-academic computer use to look at the monitor with ‘fast eyes’—it’s those computer games, again—and it is futile to think they will slow down enough to actually think about something they are ‘reading/ looking at’ on the screen. So, if we take our culture seriously, if we take reading seriously, we need to get our students off the computer and off the Internet. We need to get them back to books and pencils—yeah, pencils, though I suppose a quill pen would be acceptable. Moreover, we need to honor older forms of narrative, like sitting around the campfire telling stories—yes, campfires, though ‘its modern day equivalent the PowerPoint projector’ is acceptable to Professor Bauerlein as well…

PowerPoint? Think Abe Lincoln reading by the fire, a screen off to one side, holding a mouse. First slide: “Four score and seven years ago…” Second slide: a graphic showing how many years in a score. Maybe a third slide showing the math: 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 7 = 87 years. Think a flickering center light, the students gathered round, their quill pens poised, a storyteller in the center, spinning tales of mystery and wonder about…I don’t know…the use of adverbs…or the use of prepositions at the end of a sentence. Something to get the blood flowing.

The PowerPoint thing kind of threw me; it seemed a little more research might be necessary here, so I read another article, this one by James Bowman first published in The New Atlantis, but now available on the web. “Is Google making us Stupid?” is his question. And his answer is yes. But that’s not the heart of the matter. The real problem is all those teachers.

If our young people are toiling their way through their educational careers while reading less than ever before for their own pleasure or enlightenment, why be surprised? No one has ever taught them that books can be read for pleasure or enlightenment—or for any other purpose than to be exposed as the coded rationalization for the illegitimate powers of the ruling classes that they really are. Why would you willingly read a single line of literature if that is all you supposed it to consist of?

Now, I know, your average literature teacher is a sycophantic ideologue, grinding away at the latest intellectual fashion and not at all interested in the pleasures of the text, the joys and passions of actual reading, but still, “the coded rationalization for the illegitimate powers of the ruling class?” It’s been a while since I was in college, but I don’t remember that lesson.

There is another article called, “Is Google making us Stupid?”, this one originally in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr—but of course I read it on the Internet. Remember Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001? When Dave Bowman (no relation, I trust, to James Bowman) slowly disconnects Hal the computer from his database, he (Hal) moans, “Dave my mind is going.” This is analogous to how Mr. Carr is feeling these days—not, you know, dying exactly, it’s just that he isn’t doing the deep reading he used to do. Instead of Tolstoy or Kierkegaard, he’s fooling around with Google and ‘Mary had a Little Lamb.’

Carr’s contention is a little more serious than fast eyes and dogmatic teachers: He thinks we may be undergoing a change in the way we think. The medium is the message; because we have a new medium, our brains are being rewired; we are being programmed to be superficial sots. Our consciousness is being scattered by the sheer diversity of resources available to us: pop-up ads, animated advertisements, hyperlinks, multiple windows, e-mail messages. You get the picture: Computers may be working to counter our deepest goals regarding education. We may be multitasking ourselves into a profound state of ignorance.

Bummer.

Painting another Picture

The classroom can be a barrier, a wall, a box, a prison, a church. It can be a pasture or a meadow. It can be a window. A platform.

I’ve given you a bunch of metaphors. Sure, the classroom is a room that has a class in it; you can figure on having a black or white board in the front, some desks, a source of heat, a dynamic teacher, eager students; that’s a real classroom: but metaphors like these control the way we think about the literal room. The classroom can be a box that contains the students, holds them in and controls them. The classroom can be a prison. The classroom can be a pasture, nourishing the students. It can be a window on the world outside, a platform to discovery.

Fortunately it’s not an either/ or situation here: ‘all of above’ can be the answer to my implied question. But if you’re scanning this, I hope the word control jumped out at you, for to nourish the students, you have to control the classroom, correct? Nobody wants the little cherubs swinging from the rafters, nobody wants chaos and anarchy, milk and cookies spilled all over the place. When I was in high school, I had a Spanish class where every time the teacher turned her back to write something on the board, half the class (the boys) stood up and threw a paper airplane across the room. It was not a good educational experience. The teacher never figured out how not to turn her back.

 ‘Student’ can be a synonym for ‘citizen’. It can be a synonym for ‘philosopher’, ‘scholar’, or ‘sage’. It can be a synonym for ‘person’.

The student, philosopher and Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki talks about control in his book Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.

Even though you try to put some people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its widest sense.

Say you’ve got this herd of cows and you want to make sure they stay in the pasture. There are two ways to do this. You can build a very strong fence and surround the field, patrol it rigorously to keep it secure—or you can get a very big pasture.

So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them.

What Suzuki Roshi doesn’t tell us is that the cows might not know how to behave when they realize the proportions of this pasture.

The Big Pasture

Professor Bauerlein remarks on the good intentions of educators who set up computer labs for their students. They think the students are actually going to use them to read and study, to actually ponder the profundities of our civilization; they think they are extending the horizons of the students by giving them access to this new found source of information; they think they are extending the classroom—taking that literal box and changing the metaphor from prison to pasture. Little do they realize how little the students absorb their assignments—poor benighted fools—even with all the testing our schools do now. Little do they realize the students are looking at these computer monitors with the same mind-set that they bring to their Wii. Little do they realize how little this has to do with education.

Now, I hope you realize how little I think of this stuff. It’s not so much the idea that he thinks PowerPoint, perhaps the dullest program in existence, is an important narrative tool, nor is it the little confusions, like when talking about the ‘flattening’ of reading he writes: It equates handheld screens with Madame Bovary, as if they made the same cognitive demands and inculcated the same habits of attention. I mean, handheld screens are technology we use to read information. Madame Bovary is (or can be) the content we are reading. The problem is that he gets the big pasture wrong.

When we think about using computers we butt up against two models that don’t necessarily conflict, but can be thought to do so: The first is the world of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, the desktop, files and folders, keyboarding skills, information processing—a serious important use for computers, and the model at the heart of the origin of the personal computer. Let’s call this model Business Operations, or BO for short.

The second model is a little less easy to define, partially because it is a developing and emerging model (and one I hope to explore at greater length one of these days). It sees the Internet as both a vehicle of exploration, and as a mirroring of the world. Properly speaking we’re talking about the computer, the Internet and a data base so big that it is mind boggling to comprehend. Petabytes. I mean, just how big is a petabyte? Google, for one, is thinking in terms of petabytes these days. It could be just the beginning…

 If the first step in computing was to see that information could be formulated using a simple binary formulation, the steps we’re taking now are to allow this binary structure  via the computer and the vast structure that is the Internet to embrace and engulf the world—a kind of knowing, I think.

 Let’s be honest, this is the computer mysticism model… and we got here listening to an old Zen Master… But keep listening. Here a short quote from an online essay about technology written by Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinoza: 

In writing about technology, Heidegger formulates the goal we are concerned with here as that of gaining a free relation to technology–a way of living with technology that does not allow it to “warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.” According to Heidegger our nature is to be world disclosers. That is, by means of our equipment and coordinated practices we human beings open coherent, distinct contexts or worlds in which we perceive, act, and think. Each such world makes possible a distinct and pervasive way in which things, people, and selves can appear and in which certain ways of acting make sense. The Heidegger of Being and Time called a world an understanding of being and argued that such an understanding of being is what makes it possible for us to encounter people and things as such. He considered his discovery of the ontological difference–the difference between the understanding of being and the beings that can show up given an understanding of being–his single great contribution to Western thought.

Professor Bauerlein, Martin Heidegger! And by the way, if you want to start reading War and Peace, here’s a link to an online version.

It is like now that I’m down here I stopped thinking about things.  No wait I’m still here but I just stopped brooding.  Perhaps I began to live a willfully discontinuous life.  Before when I was drinking it was like I was in a large hole an I could never crawl up the side without the wall caving in on me. Then I stopped drinking and accepted the facts around me. I figured out something I wanted to do and a way I wanted to live and I made it or let it happen.  I assume I let it because I have found that i have a lot less influence on things then I thought. But since I have been where I want to be I disconnected from the human force that brought me here.  The old me that contained that “identitiy’ dissipated.  I thinks its important to try to tease out what part of that was myself and what part was old habits of mind formed from exposure to unhealthy enviorments.  I Fear the latter for some reason.  I mean is it true this preoccupation with meaning is just an unhealthy  character trait that certain humans have? I think that’s what Richard Rorty was saying in this interview I listened to.  Metaphysics turns out to be not just unnessecary but a willfully unhealthy activity.  The big Idea is we have reached the end of the evolution of human society and a nice Danish style liberal democracy is it’s apotheosis.  Ok then if that’s the case then I am right where I should want to be only I still can’t get any motivation except the motivation toward motivation.  Perhaps I am just giving off some heat.  From where I’m watching lately I can barely make out any actual beings other then myself.  All the other ones are just so confused and beside the point.  But then what’s the art for?  I don’t think I can be satisfied with pure form.
That’s right where Heidegger comes in.  There is still some hope there. I”l have to continue this later.

He just pops up all over
I’m currently listening to an interview of a Heidegger Scholar who teaches at Stanford.
I have the Prof. Hubert Dreyfus’ undergraduate lectures on Heidegger ready on my Ipod.
I always need to go beyond where I am at.

I have finally found a large amount of audio of Intelligent people talking intelligently
I have finally completely removed myself from the degrading world of the common media
though I have yet to gather around me many other people who are of like mind.

Andrew Mitchell on the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (10-18-05)

Currently we’re working on putting together a series of documents for our church website which will explain who we are and what we believe. Since we’ve only got a first draft ready I’m not going to post or link to the text yet – except as the following:

I generated that tag cloud version of our explanation of the gospel and its centrality to the life of our church with a nifty little tool called wordle, which I ran across in this post on the First Things blog.  The size of the words gives a nice graphical depiction of how frequently they’re used.  On the whole, I’d say this is encouraging – nice to see words like ‘gospel’, ‘God’, ‘love’, ‘understand’, ’sins’, ‘Jesus’, and ‘church’ standing out.  On the other hand, the fact that ‘etc.’ is apparently showing up as often as ‘Christ’ suggests that the prose could stand to be tightened up just a tad.

You might think that this would be a good way of checking whether or not a given piece of text (such as a sermon, as the First Things post suggested) is sufficiently clear, at least in terms of emphasis.  One of our elders (whose work involves machine recognition of language) was quick to point out, however, that we’re terribly far from having any algorithm capable of extracting meaning from language with the facility of a typical human (and we may never have one, at least according to this guy).  And indeed, our discussion of the draft last night centered almost entirely on making it clearer – as it stands it assumes more familiarity with Christianity, and in particularly reformed theology, than would be appropriate for the general audience (we hope) is visiting our website.

On the other hand, nearly everyone visiting any website is probably familiar with tag clouds – perhaps posting that version of our statement would be clearest of all…

Dreyfus attacks several of the foundational presuppositions of AI in his book What Computers Can’t Do.

1) The Biological Assumption — That we act, on the biological level, according to formal rules, i.e., that our brain is a digital computer and our minds are analogous to software.

2) The Psychological Assumption — That, regardless of whether our brains are digital computers, our minds function by performing calculations, i.e., by running algorithms.

3) The Epistemological Assumption — That regardless of whether our brains are digital computers or whether our minds run algorithms, the things our minds do can be described according to formal rules (and hence, by algorithms.) This is, naturally, a weaker assumption, yet one required by the idea of stupefication.

4) The Ontological Assumption — That “the world can be exhaustively analysed in terms of context free data or atomic facts” (205).

The epistemological assumption is the one that we ought to be concerned with at the moment, as evidenced by this quotation on the matter:

In light of the previous post on descriptive rules, we can posit that stupefication requires a kind of epistemological assumption: that mental tasks like that of playing chess and (perhaps) of communicating in a natural language can be described by formal rules, even if those formal rules have nothing to do with what we happen to be doing while performing that task.

In Dreyfus’s book, he undermines the epistemological assumption (along with the three other assumptions) by showing that they cannot be held in all cases and with regard to all human activities. However, I don’t think this is necessarily very crippling. Even if there can be no comprehensive set of rules or formal systems that fully describe all intelligent human behaviour, AI is hardly done for. The questions merely change from ones like “Can we make a formal system that fully describes task X?” to “How close can we get to describing task X in a formal system?” And this may well put us back in Turing’s court, where the benchmark is how many people the formal system can fool.

In other words, I’m questioning the validity of this proposition:

Dreyfus is probably right in terms of the majority of the research that has been done in AI over the past century. But this ontological assumption need not be the “deepest assumption” underlying projects that seek to stupefy. For in stupefication, one takes up the mantel of the epistemological assumption while relegating the ontological assumption to a hypothesis that must be empirically verified, not necessarily assumed — and certainly not assumed “exhaustively,” as Dreyfus suggests.

Citations:

Dreyfus, Hubert L. What Computers Can’t Do. New York : Harper and Row, 1979

Hubert Dreyfus wrote his book What Computers Can’t Do long before Luciano Floridi came onto the scene. Yet the following point seems specifically constructed to shed light on the problem of relevance (mentioned in this post):

As Mr. Searle’s version of what allows the mind to conceive of ‘the real’ in reality is similar to Husserl’s (not, huh!, a pun) focus on the first person’s subject, the debate between he and Professor Dreyfus—his claim that the actual study of perception is of higher importance than logical deducation—had reached something of an impasse; Dreyfus fesses up he missed the boat in overestimating the absence of what distinguishes Searle’s work on objective, social realities from Husserl’s in the rather subjective field of human consciousness. However the author maintains that the standard model presented by The Professor is a bit too simplistic in breaking all of the human world as experienced into either logical intentions (which may be unconscious) or just dumb, inanimate stuff (these do coincide.) “…when Searle analyzes the role of propositional representations in constituting actions and institutional facts, he is doing logical analysis rather than phenomenology, and since he isn’t doing” a study of the constitutive role of perception, looking back—should’ve known beforehand—he’s actually doing quite the updated Hus-serlian job: Professor Dreyfus thinks John Searle’s general model leaves out diachronic, psychological adaptation and to less rigidly contextualized social realities.

People’s particular direction of consciousness towards the reality they’re perceiving can have quite the effect; like running eyes over vs. reading the words.

JRS overestimates deliberate character of intentionality (i.e., what’s going on when your perception is right). He also claims for it to count as such when navigating competing interpretations, it has to have a supra-conscious understanding of its action (most people don’t pay that much attention). Basically, sometimes one can be correct without knowing why and this affects not the character of the intended effect.

HD (not a poet, is a male) believes that the definition of action should have a reciprocal definition and that, if every movement of an action is not independent, it ought to be considered a result of mind’s direction—and this comprises intentionality. (Searle likes to look at the related pieces of a movement and say all those were real instead of enchilada). This does away with liminal states of intentionality in which intention/action are considered dualistic, but related. ‘Participating in ΜΕΤΕΧΩΙ’ we don’t bite on. Merleau-Ponty imports a measure of instinctual adaptation in the moment to try and explain. This allows the subject of (non)fulfillment of conditions to be made less important (but also explains how experience aids an intention).

Conditions of improvement seem a better approach, because there’s less conflation of intentionality and direct intention of meaning. Basically, it can be a cause without anyone knowing it. Walter Freeman added a neuro-scientific component which relates to cognitive development. Will and skill can be both simplified as cause or effect, or reciprocally lead indirectly to other, each. The Brain Model shows how you don’t need to mean each part specific to get an overall effect of meaning achieved, or even just happening to hit up on correct opinion.

However Hubert Dreyfus does admit, one really can’t challenge the man as relates to how these individual pieces as minds add up to cause an entire, malleable, social, real world of objects and facts, but is based—for us—on our perception of them. However, he could be said to overestimate the constituent role of institutional realities as if understood by the category of object—there is a fluidity of interpretations in perception of this statement is fact.

“Searle’s commitment to logical analysis leads him to overlook the social norms already involved in using something as a medium of exchange,” that Marxist crap we bag on & Rorty’s kids like so much. “In general, he thus blurs the distinction between two different kinds of collective intentionality”—derived but corrective and foundational support (if you think of Ezra Pound imitating Walt Whitman only without all the gay, fascist stuff—for these two quite appropriate)—”and so passes over the important developmental role of social norms in making possible the constitution of institutional facts.” The problem is that the full totality of human experience of the world makes the distinction between cultural norms and social institution pretty damn slippery; logical analysis tends to do away with that realization by setting too rigidly the definitions on which its assumptions rest (but not lie).

There’s stuff you mean to do, things you just kind of do and doing things to stuff without even realizing it’s what; on the other hand, that which prescribes rules, people who let you get away by enforcing the bent ones and contingent laws of games, dollars, words and other things going on in time which situation can change—these all add up to make the backround to conscious beings interacting with/in reality.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/

So what kind of title is ends & goals anyway?

My blog’s namesake is a Nietzschean aphorism from The Genealogy of Morals that considers both ends and goals.

End and Goal. – Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; an yet: as long as the melody has not reached it’s end, it also hasn’t reached it goal. A parable.

I have been enamored by Nietzsche’s aphorisms since I bought the Walter Kaufman translations of (nearly) all his writing at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon ten years ago. End and Goal, however, has consistently, yet inexplicably, remained at the top of my list. It is an elusive yet approachable commentary on the significance of being alive. More recently, I’ve been getting better acquainted with the big existential philosophers of our time. For me, said acquaintance began with Hubert Dreyfus‘ excellent podcasts on existentialism in literature and film and his passionate approach to Martin Heidegger in a pair of courses: Heidegger I and Heidegger II. But just two weeks ago I read a chapter out of Gadamer’s Truth and Method that resonate beautifully, and hopefully clearly, with Nietzsche’s End and Goal. Oddly enough, Gadamer is talking about play, and more specifically the chaper title read Play as the Clue to Ontological Explanation. Here are a few excerpts, if you care to take a look:

Andrew Keen interviews:

Professor Hubert Dreyfus of UC Berkeley’s Philosophy department and author of What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Intelligence, is probably the most distinguished critic of artificial intelligence on the planet. As the author of Thinking in Action: On the Internet and Mind over Machine, Dreyfus is also a leading critic of digital culture and technology. Talking with Dreyfus was a treat. His wit and erudition represent a refreshing break from much of the sanctimonious techno-babble emanating out of Silicon Valley.

AfterTV: Hubert Dreyfus

MP3

Hubert Dreyfus versucht Heidegger einen wissenschaftstheoretischen Realismus unterzuschieben. Dass das Sein vom Verstehen des Daseins abhängig, das Seiende aber von ihm unabhängig ist, legt er dahingehend aus, dass die reine, entweltlichte Vorhandenheit der von den Naturwissenschaften entdeckten Dinge (Dreyfus nennt hier immer Elektronen als Exemplum) nicht vom Sein des Daseins abhängig ist: Wenn es kein Dasein gäbe, gäbe es trotzdem die von den Naturwissenschaften entdeckten Tatsachen, eben das Spiel der Atome und Elektronen etc. Darin liegt ein Rückfall in ein vulgäres Verständnis von “Sein”, in die scheinbare Selbstverständlichkeit, dass Sein einfach Vorhandensein bedeutet; denn in welchem Sinne ist das Seiende vom Dasein unabhängig? Natürlich nur im Sinne des Vorhandenseins: als Vorhandenes. Nun ist aber das Vorhandensein selbst, d.h. der Entwurf von Vorhandenheit, stets vom Sein des Daseins abhängig: Die Natur selbst entwirft sich nicht als eine Summe von bloß Vorhandenem, es ist der Mensch der Wissenschaften, der sie daraufhin entwirft.  Gerade darum macht sich Heidegger in einer Nebenbemerkung klar, dass das Sein der Natur sich weder auf Vorhandenheit noch auf Zuhandenheit und das Sein des Daseins reduzieren lässt, d.h. die Frage nach der physis wird in Sein und Zeit als eine offene, zukünftig zu bearbeitende, angetippt. Nichts wäre verfehlter, als den Naturwissenschaften die Natur (ihren Sinn von Sein) zu überlassen!Ein – gewissermaßen kantisches – Gedankenexperiment hierzu: Man nehme an, es gäbe einen Schöpfergott, der die Dinge der Natur hervorgebracht hat, und frage sich dann, ob für diesen hypothetischen Schöpfer diese Dinge wirklich in der Form der physikalischen Wirklichkeit von Atomen und Elektronen erscheinen müssten. Kantisch: Erscheinen die Dinge für den intuitus originarius, für den intellectus archetypus, der die Dinge in ihrem An-sich hervorbringt, als Atome und Elektronen, sind die Dinge in ihrem “Entstand” Atome und Elektronen? Tatsächlich scheint Dreyfus (wie jeder wissenschaftsgläubige Naturalist, nur dass er zusätzlich eine Welt der genuinen Intelligbilität des menschlichen Daseins annimmt, die aber letztlich für ihn keinen fundamentalontologischen Wert zu haben scheint) anzunehmen, dass das naturwissenschaftliche Wissen ein quasi-göttliches Wissen vom An-sich der Dinge ist, mit dem Unterschied, dass für uns dieses Wissen nur technisch praktikabel, aber nicht intelligibel ist (so interpretiert er Heideggers Bemerkung zur prinzipiellen Unverständlichkeit der naturwissenschaftlichen Tatsachen, die aber eigentlich nicht mit diesem unerkennbaren An-sich-sein, sondern nur mit der vorausgegangenen Entweltlichung etwas zu tun hat). Der Fehlschluss von Dreyfus verläuft ungefähr folgendermaßen: “Sein” ist nichts anderes als eine bestimmte Intelligbilität des vorhandenen Seienden, eine bestimmte, bloß subjektive Zugänglichkeit zum an sich Vorhandenen, die das Subjekt aus seiner Welt der Praxis gewinnt; der Wert dieses Seins geht ganz im “Für-uns” auf; darüber hinaus gibt es aber noch ein Sein an sich, das sich genau darin bekundet, dass das Subjekt in seinem Verstehen auf etwas Nicht-Intelligibles, Unverständliches trifft, und dies sind die naturwissenschaftlichen Tatsachen. Die Absurdität einer solchen Interpretation von Sein und Zeit besteht darin, dass sie naiv ein Sein an sich ansetzt, natürlich im Sinne des bloßen Vorhandenseins, ein Sein, das nun plötzlich nicht mehr als bloße Intelligibilität des Seienden, Zugänglichkeit zum Seienden verstanden wird, sondern als der Basissinn der an sich bestehenden Wirklichkeit selbst, unabhängig von den subjektiven Projektionen des Menschen (wobei man hier nebenbei zu sehen beginnt, wie problematisch die einfache Identifikation von Dasein und Mensch ist, die Dreyfus überall voraussetzt). Das Projekt von Sein und Zeit muss man aber doch so verstehen, dass es dieses naive Verständnis vom Sinn des Seins in Frage stellt: Es geht Heidegger nicht um irgendeinen subjektiven Sinn des Seins, oder um die ontische Abhängigkeit vom Dasein des Menschen,; es geht ihm immer und von Beginn an um den ontologischen Sinn des Seins, um das An-sich des Seins selbst (nicht der Dinge, denn dies wäre keine ontologische Frage) als der Grundlegung jeder Form von positiven Wissenschaft des Seienden. Die phänomenologische Methode Husserls hatte diese Möglichkeit, nach dem Sinn des Seins schlechthin zu fragen, ohne in die komische epistemologische Aporie der Subjektivierung dieser Frage (und die angebliche Bescheidung durch die Differenzierung zwischen erkennbarem Für-uns und unerkennbarem An-sich) zu verfallen, eröffnet. In der Streichung eines An-sich bleibt Heidegger treuer Schüler Husserls, ein Phänomenologe eben, der sich an das hält, was ihm die Erfahrung im weitesten Sinne (d.h. nicht die wissenschaftlich domestizierte Erfahrung, sondern die durch die phänomenologische Reduktion zu sich selbst befreite Erfahrung!) darbietet. Ein ganz anderes Kapitel eröffnet sich allerdings durch die kantische Frage, ob es nicht einen solchen architektonischen Grenzbegriff (“Ding an sich”) braucht, um die spezifische Endlichkeit des menschlichen Daseins herausstellen zu können.   

In seiner aktuellen Vorlesung zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit (Podcast) ist Hubert Dreyfus jetzt bei der Frage gelandet, ob Heidegger ein “Realist” oder ein “Idealist” ist. Dreyfus behauptet, dass Heidegger letztlich – um dem Idealismus zu entgehen – einen “robust realism” vertritt, und das heißt laut Dreyfus: Es gibt Seiendes, das auch unabhängig von der Entdecktheit im Dasein vorhanden ist, nämlich die Grundelemente, die die naturwissenschaftliche Forschung entdeckt: Elektronen, Atome etc.Diese Identifizierung des Seienden “an sich” mit den wissenschaftlichen Fakten hat aber eigentlich gar nichts mit Heidegger zu tun. Heidegger ist Realist in dem Sinne, dass es überhaupt keinen Sinn macht, zwischen phänomenal begegnendem Seienden und Seiendem an sich ontologisch zu unterscheiden. Die Unterscheidung zwischen Für-das-Dasein und An-sich hat hier allenfalls im kantischen Sinne Relevanz, insofern man das Ding an sich nicht als ein Etwas hinter den Dingen, sondern als architektonischen Grenzbegriff auffasst. Aber Heidegger kann kein Realist sein in Hinblick auf die Ergebnisse der Wissenschaften, wie Dreyfus behauptet, denn was für einen Vorzug sollte das Vorhandene der Wissenschaften gegenüber dem Vorhandenen der entweltlichten Alltagserfahrung haben? Das uns begegnende Seiende bringen wir seinem Dasein nach nicht hervor (und deshalb ist es sinnvoll, vom Ding an sich in seinem “Entstand” grenzbegrifflich zu sprechen, wie es Heidegger im Anschluss an Kant tut), aber dies gilt für alles begegnende Seiende, nicht nur für das in der wissenschaftlichen Einstellung Begegnende. Ebenso gilt aber, dass die Weise, wie und als was das Seiende uns begegnet, vom Sein des Daseins abhängt. Man kann hier auf einen alten Grundsatz der Scholastik zurückgreifen: Quidquid recipitur, ad modum recipientis recipitur, d.h. das Empfangene hängt von der Weise des Empfangens ab, und diese Weise gründet, für uns unhintergehbar, im Sein des Daseins. Wenn es also kein Dasein gäbe, dann würde das nicht bedeuten, dass es nur Elektronen und Atome gäbe. Es gibt nicht einfach eine vorhandene Grundschicht, auf der die Interpretationen des Daseins aufbauen. Wenn es kein Dasein gäbe, gäbe es auch kein Vorhandensein. Dies ist nur ein Ausdruck dafür, dass wir das Dasein nicht einfach mittels Gedankenexperiment wegdenken können, um derart zu einer “an sich” bestehenden Grundschicht der Wirklichkeit zu gelangen. Diese Fragestellung ist schon keine ontologische mehr, sondern versucht in einem bestimmten, bereits eröffneten ontologischen Horizont (dem der Vorhandenheit) ontische Verhältnisse zu bestimmen.