Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 21:11:21 GMT Server: NCSA/1.5 Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 18:30:18 GMT Content-length: 2554
My interest lies primarily in contemporary philosophy and the insights which it provides into artificial intelligence. Computer science is, in many ways, the queen of sciences because it is the most general attempt to model the world via logical categories. The most complicated "entity" to model is, of course, the human mind (as distinct from the brain). Before even attempting to construct such a model, however, it is worth asking whether, given the constrains of computer science, such an undertaking is even feasible. The justification for this project is omnipresent throughout much of the history of philosophy beginning from Plato and Aristotle, and culminating in the present-day Cartesian (technical-scientific) world-view. The questioning of such a world-view - even if it ultimately ends in affirmation - is of the utmost importance if we are to understand the limits and nature not only of computer science (and by implication, our entire sheaf of techno-rational assumptions), but ourselves as well. The attempt to overcome traditional metaphysics began perhaps with Fredrick Nietzsche and his questioning of the prominence of the notion of truth, and its relationship to the self, happiness and will. Martin Heidegger, especially in his later writings, repeatedly questions the autonomy of the self, and focuses on the "idea" of Being (manifested in the forgotten copula "is") which underlies all language, thinking, and, hence, Dasein (human being/nature). Most recently, the work of Jacques Derrida has expanded while challenging Heidegger's writings, most importantly in the area of absolute presence to oneself (truth) in his essay "Speech and Phenomena". More and more, contemporary philosophy has focused on the nature of language: whether it is merely a medium for transporting "data" in which "information" can be encoded and later decoded, or whether language is ineluctably embedded in "data" and "information" (and vice-versa). In such a question lies the perpetual conflict between science and the ineffability of art; of the attempt to abstract "meaning" from a poem or a piece of music. The relation to AI is obvious: if the basis of ones humanity is language and the essence of language defies modeling and synopsis, strong AI is impossible; computer science is, by implication, a sheaf of nice hacks, absolutely devoid of beauty.