Philosophy of the technique

The work cannot be comparable with the instinct. It with the form of a clever report/ratio to nature or the matter, namely the Technique. It is in the sense that one could say without irony which work was release with regard to nature and of our own immediate nature. However, this release is, in the tradition resulting from Hegel and Marx, inseparable from alienation. A given technical mode imposes on the individual as at the company a whole of constraints, all the more heavy, in first analyzes at least, that the technical capacities of the man are still limited, that it is necessary for him thus to devote more time and efforts to work. Moreover, the technique can be defined like the whole of the well defined processes which make it possible to control the transformation of the matter, to subject it to a preestablished project. It then seems to even go from oneself that the company, defined by the Marxists like collective company of control of nature, will prolong, in its operation, the mechanical character suitable for the technique. In other words, the operation of the company, social reports/ratios, compared to simple " reports/ratios of production" , not only would constitute themselves around the techniques, but still would result from a given, historical technological state. There is however in the Marxism a libertarian dimension, in the sense that more advanced techniques would allow the man and the company to free itself from the reign of the need and the scarcity. Periodically one finds this prospect at the time of new objects technical, like electricity or, currently, Internet, favourable by their flexibility with the constitution of technical Utopias.

However, an technological innovation, would it be omnipresent as at the 19th century century the Steam engine, in the case of imposes it in itself an social order, forcing technical closed, libertarian in the case of technical open? If one should not over-estimate the impact of the technical tool in itself on the company, is it necessary for as much rejecting out of the philosophical reflection the technical invention? To affirm as Heidegger that the gasoline of the technique doesn't have anything technique, hear the technological one? It is precisely what Gilbert Simondon refused to do. Nevertheless, one is well obliged to note that the contemporary companies use and misuse the techniques without really being interested in operation of the tool, nor to wonder about what is the invention, which brings into play at least three elements; technical tools existing already, scientific knowledge, and finally the technical innovation itself. As had seen it Bergson, even if science multiplied by ten our technical power, the technical invention is not reduced for as much to an application of the scientific knowledge. Thus, known as Bergson, in L be two sources of morals and of the religion , the Rhone continues to run in the Geneva Lake. It is not lost there. The Rhone, it is the technique, and Geneva the Lake, techno-science.

The technical object, expression of human ingeniousness, can however be considered under another angle, realistic within the meaning of the realism of the Idées at Plato. Indeed, the technical object is the fruit of an adaptation of a desire or a need to the medium, adaptation which evokes that which models the life. It was often noticed that the technique found by other means of the solutions comparable with that of biology. In this direction each technical object, since he is invented, tends in its evolution to approach a certain perfection, in any case the perfection compatible with the scientific knowledge and the resources of the time and the company concerned (André Leroi-Gourhan). One thus can following Plato and of Paul Valéry to speak about technical ideas which so to speak magnetize the invention and the evolution techniques. Here is what Valéry makes say to the heart of Socrate:

The innumerable practice joined one day the ideal, and stops there. The thousands of tests of thousands of men converge slowly towards the most sparing figure and surest: this one attack, everyone imitates it; and the million these counterparts answers the myriads of former gropings forever, and recover them. ( Eupalinos or the architect ) (1923)

Besides the authors more darwiniens conceive the relationship between the scientific Vérité and the physical reality in the same way.

Technology

If philosophy has evil to think the technique as such, one can also make an almost symmetrical remark. As much the technical thought is able to design the technical object itself like a determined reality, as much it is impotent as such to anticipate the effect of a new technique on the company, its organization, its values. Is this really there the mark of a subordination of the man to the technique, metamorphosed in an obscure power? (allusion to Heidegger) Which is the share of passivity of the company and that of investment of the new object by its own desires, including the various forms of the will for power? In more optimistic doesn't a way perhaps, the company define new projects in the light of new technical possibilities, which stimulate its creativity?

Without surprise, the technique is lived like an energy acting and foreign by dominated, in particular those from which the trades disappear because of technological advances; and which does not have the financial means, intellectuals or, to introduce new reality into their own strategies. However, one can with Simone Weil detect a more general dimension and more subtle of passivity in the fact that the technique, by its existence even, the world transforms, if it is admitted that the possibility left intrinsic reality. New means of transport transform indeed the rules of the game soldier or economic, since for example the terrestrial ways are from now on likely to be bombarded by aviation. That finally does not mean that the company is only the prolongation of the operation of a given technology. It is simply, as Hannah Arendt notices it, that the technical productions are seen built-in the human world, so that manufacture starts " a process whose exit cannot be entirely envisaged and escapes consequently the will of sound auteur". That wants to also say that " the man is never exclusively homo faber" , but always already an actor of the human and political world, with its antagonisms.

Moreover, a machine, or a computer program, incorporate necessarily a human project; better, the technical company as a whole has a significance which is not likely to be apprehended by the technicians as such, but well by the thinkers and the historians. To paraphrase Heidegger, the gasoline of the technique is nothing technological. Thus, it is not so much the principle of the steam engine, released by Sadi Carnot, which transformed the world that the project to make work human infinitely more effective, or productive. In this direction, this company belongs to the culture, even tends to merge with all the contemporary culture. Besides this same project could take the form of processes which are not strictly speaking technological, like the division of the labor in manufactures. In the Capital, Karl Marx reads even in manufacture the dialectical origin of mechanization: as soon as manufacture " had reached a certain degree of development, its technical base narrow entered in conflict with the needs for production which it had itself créés." " This workshop, this product of the manufacturing division of work, gave birth to in its turn the machines". One can thus reverse the Marxist problems, while seeing in the development of the techniques, not the engine eternal of the history, but the translation of a program of maximalisation of the exploitation, appeared tardily in all his purity.

In the Principle responsibility , Hans Jonas showed however that this increased control of nature goes from par with impotence to determine the exact consequences of them on nature and the man himself. Also he proposes a new formulation of the Kantian categorical imperative. Account always should be also held, in the implementation of a new technique, risks which it wraps for the generations of men who were not born yet. It goes until proposing a revaluation of the fear, in the name of the responsibility, which it calls the heuristics of the fear.

According to Patrice Flichy, which rejects any mechanical design of the influence of technology, an innovation like data processing does not have a future very traced, but is the field of a complex interaction between various actors. " They are thus not some brilliant inventors who work out the matrix of the histoire" , he writes. Thus, it is with a view to create a commercial dynamics that computing industry invested the multi-media one, but neither data processing nor the CD-ROM was designed specifically for that. As for the policies, they see in the constitution of new networks the possibility of a policy of revival keynésienne, or contrary, a kind of Trojan horse of liberalism. Flichy, as for him, intends to oppose to the bag object, invested contradictory, libertarian or capitalist hopes for example, the border object. A border object is an object which can answer waitings of many actors, because of its flexibility like its technological coherence. However, all is not possible, since technological specificities of the object are constraining, but also the choices, once they were made. Let us add that the various actors do not have the same weight, for example the hackers, delinquent libertarian data processing, and the large companies of telecommunication. On very an other mode, the handymen also intend them to create, instead of being satisfied with a prefabricated object. And is it impossible to reintegrate technology in a project vaster, wiser, than the exploitation of the man and nature?

Artificial intelligence and human intelligence

does the machine think?

See also: History of information

The opinion compares readily the human brain to a computer, able to generate the conscience by its only operation, but she will hesitate to grant the conscience to the machines. As incoherent as these representations appear, it is legitimate to wonder how a data-processing machine can, if not to think, at least to handle symbols as if she thought.

A traditional machine reproduces a material operation indefinitely corresponding to a given intention, for example to weave a clothing. The data-processing machine, it, simulates operations of thought. The language plays a crucial role there, since a symbol has a face material, easy to handle, and a idéelle face. The characteristic of a reasoning is to be connected rigorously, with the manner of a spiritual automat. Mathematics makes it possible to formalize using a single language logic, the operation of the machines and… mathematics themselves. A program applies a sequence of operations defined in the data entered the machine. The machine explores without being tired and at a disconcerting speed all the possible ways. More generally, it can connect an immense number of elementary operations. Lastly, the machine puts in report/ratio much more data than we cannot do it, and discovers unforeseen connections thus (Jean-Gabriel Ganascia).

There is thus no reason to grant the conscience to a machine. Indeed, it is only one clever mechanism which by repeating a great number of times same material operations MIME a complex operation of the thought, or rather an operation symbolic system. These symbols correspond to contents only for one human conscience. The machine can translate a text without including/understanding the direction of only one mot. It is enough for that which exist rules of transformation of a language towards the other and which one can identify by simple material operations the value of a mot.

According to Alan Turing, the observer of a " Machine of Turing " is unable to induce its physical operation. In this direction, the block box of the machine evokes the conscience: the observation has access neither to nor to the other. In the case of the machine, it cannot interpret, quickly at least, this operation that by allotting to the machine itself intentions and knowledge, for example the intention to gain part of failure. Thus, the machine appears to us it to calculate, or translate, or beat Kasparov with the failures, and however does not do anything of it.

The artificial intelligence is for Turing intelligence with the direction where for Kant the living beings suppose a finality. Thus, the bird has hollow bones to be lighter and to fly. Actually, nature did not produce this bird at all as we produce a plane. It is only one convenient analogy there, expression of our incapacity (at least before Darwin and Mendel) to include/understand what occurs in the organic matter. Nature continues ends only for us, the artificial intelligence is intelligence only for us. Turing proposed the following definition: " a machine is intelligent which makes illusion and passes for intelligent to the eyes of the hommes." He also imagined a test: one can speak about thinking machine since interrogative human confronted with a machine believes to deal with human intelligence.

See Test of Turing.

the irreducibility of the thought to the conscience

However, the possibility even of these prowesses results in wondering about the nature of the human thought. Our thoughts are not formal and blind, but are intentional: us minks through them of realities or the idealities. For as much, isn't there in the natural intelligence a big part of mechanisms, even of mechanisms similar to those implemented by a machine? Contrary to an observer, we have access immediately in our own state of consciousnesses. But we do not know therefore all that occurs in we when we count, or when we speak. We do not convert the totality of our operations of clear and distinct representations. Generally, we are aware only words which we pronounce, at most the EC what they wrap a significance that we could develop using certain additional words, or certain experiments. The significance is not either an image: the number two does not merge with two points, or two apples, four, they is at the same time four points aligned or arranged two by two, etc But, I cannot imagine all the possibilities at the same time. In short, we do not know really what recovers the obviousness however undeniable of the thought. When I think, the being of my thought does not merge with my state of consciousnesses; with my psychology. I see well that the formula " has is larger than b" is equivalent to " B is smaller than a" , that both are true or false at the same time, independently of my character or my temperament. I have access to this obviousness, but I do not know how I have there access, how I see as anybody particular their objective equivalence. Thus, there is in any operation of thought, and in particular most obvious of them, a certain darkness, which one can interpret as being the corrélat material operations which escape the conscience. On the other hand, watch Leibniz, the opposite way is impracticable: let us enter a machine as large as a mill. We will see only physical and chemical processes there, but nothing which resembles thought. The machine is only matter and movement, it is impossible to be represented how this machine could produce state of consciousnesses. It is less the machine which thinks than the thought which has a dimension machinale, comparable with the brain. According to Georg Simmel, the spirit is inseparable from an objective expression, which endangers its freedom besides.

However, it is not seen for what the conscience would be used if the brain could adapt mechanically to the environment. Would the life have given itself with the conscience an useless, contemplative body? Undoubtedly it is necessary rather, with Bergson, to see a bond between the capacity which has the brain to reorganize itself and conscience of our medium. According to Bergson, the brain is not a totally-enclosed machine, at every moment, it can reorganize in several ways possible. The conscience would be before any faculty to direct this play by its choices. " The computer does not imitate the human brain: a program which explores 200 million positions at the second " pense" certainly not like a large Master, who immediately identifies a small number of lines of play intéressantes" (Michel de Pracontal). It is precisely this possibility that the data processing specialists and the cyberneticians test mimer. How to equip a machine with the capacity to make strategic decisions, to be directed in a direction rather than another, without calculating in advance the exact consequences of the one and the other of these choices?

Bibliography - more

Gilbert Boss, machines to be thought - the man and the computer , Great Midday, Zurich, 1987.
François de Closets and Bruno Lussato, data-processing Imposture , Beech, 2001.
Jacques Ellul, Technique or stake of the century , Economica, 1954/1990.
Patrice Flichy, the technical innovation. Recent developments in social sciences, towards a new theory of the innovation , the Discovery, Paris, 1995.
Jean Gabriel Ganascia, the Artificial intelligence , Flammarion, 1993.
Martin Heidegger, " The question of the technique" , in Tests and conferences, Gallimard, 1958.
Hans Jonas, the principle responsibility , Fields-Flammarion, 1998.
Gilbert Simondon, Of the mode of existence of the technical objects , Sapwood, Paris, 1958,1989.
Rami Shamaa, " the world actually " , Antoine 2006
Layla Raad, 2007

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