Dasein, ChatGPT, and the Ritology of AI: Special lecture at East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, June 18 2023 (updated_

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 12:55:09 +0000

Dasein, ChatGPT, and the Ritology of AI:

Special lecture at East China University of Political Science and Law, June 18, 2023

What philosophical mischief might we unleash if Plato’s Cave or Zhuangzi's Well suddenly became inundated by algorithms, with the sound and fury of GeForce RTX™ GPU fans, insisting they’ve seen the light?

Extended Abstract:

This WIP paper builds off a guest lecture I have presented at the East China University of Political Science and Law (ECUPSL) in Shanghai, June 18, 2023. In this lecture, I had the privilege of sharing some of the preliminary research questions for my ongoing transdisciplinary survey, focusing on the intricate interplay between artificial intelligence and phenomenology. I will be highlighting the potentially profound implications of AI and its existential entanglements, particularly revolving around the context of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, and problematize some common ethical and ontological issues connected to being-AI-in-our-world.

The relentless acceleration of innovation in large language models (LLMs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs), embodied by transformative technologies like ChatGPT, deepfakes, and AI-generated art, has ignited a dual fire of awe and trepidation among technologists, ethicists, policymakers, and the broader public. As a vast body of literature explores the societal, ethical, and epistemological ripples of this ongoing technological upheaval—particularly within the fields of Information, Science, and Technology (IST)—this project seeks to offer a novel contribution by bringing into focus the lens of phenomenology: an intricate branch of philosophical inquiry renowned for its profound and methodical examination of the fundamental structures of human consciousness. By advocating for a phenomenological perspective, the project aims to illuminate how AI’s disruptions reshape not only our daily lives but also our understanding of what it means to be. In doing so, it offers critical insights into the interplay between human and supra-human consciousness, reframing our relationship with emerging technologies and their implications for the future of sentient existence.

Postscript on the "Elephant" in "Phenomenology"

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 20:24:01 +0000

(Posted by Keren Wang | Feb. 3, 2017) Per Dr. Alan Sica’s request, this post is written as a follow-up to a peculiar topic brought up during our Social Thought seminar yesterday – it concerns the “Elephant (象)” glyph in the Chinese term for “Phenomenology (现象学)”. Long story short… During our regular seminar discussion on the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (French phenomenologist) yesterday, Dr. Sica asked what is the Chinese term for “phenomenology”. Luckily, there is an official Chinese translation available for this particular philosophical term – 現象學 (pronounced “hsien-hsiang hsueh”). For easier viewing, please see the enlarged picture-file below, which also includes the standard phonetic notation for each character: The facile explanation of phrase “現象學” is that it combines 现象 (hsien-hsiang, lit. “phenomenon, materialization”) + 學 (hsueh, lit. “study, learning”). By “facile explanation”, I am referring to the fact that the Chinese writing system doesn’t follow an alphabet-word system, so any direct “word-to-word” translation between Chinese and English would be at best a “metaphorical approximation”. Unwilling to settle for the easy explanation, Alan of course pressed for more precise meaning of each individual character in 現象學, and thus going further down the impossible linguistic rabbit hole… So here’s when the “elephant” came in… The Chinese term for phenomenology, 現象學, consists three characters (or more accurately, three logograms). Here is a detailed break-down of the characters in 現象學: Indeed, for a Chinese reader, the term 現象學 does not appear as a singular, self-contained “word” per se. Rather, like most Chinese vocabularies, the nomenclature would appear as a loosely-grouped logographic cluster that reads something like “(the) study (of) manifest shape(s) and symbol(s).” Those parenthetical parts are grammatical features absent in the Chinese writing system. Indeed, concepts such as definitive articles, plurals and grammatical tense may not apply to written Chinese…at all! Chinese characters group together in ways that’s very different from English vocabularies. When used together, they do not form a new “word” in ways English alphabets would. Thus, unlike English “words”, meanings are not “encoded” into Chinese phrases and characters. Each logograph in a phrase or sentence merely defers and refers its signification in terms of its relation with those other characters in the sentence, and the final “meaning” of a phrase or sentence is obtained as the sum aggregate of signification of all the characters in the phrase. This might sound confusing, but it is worthwhile to keep in mind that even the most basic grammatical and syntactical principles in English do not apply in written Chinese. And now I regress… Most notably, the second character of the phrase, 象 (pronounced “hsiang”) , indeed means “elephant” in Chinese. Yes, when used with other characters, 象 can be used broadly to signify ideas relating to “shape”, “symbol” and “representation”. However, those are derivatives or its “ordinary” meaning of “elephant” Indeed, when the character “象” is used alone, it almost always refers to non other than those massive land mammals with long trunk and pillar-like legs. In fact, the “elephant“ in 現象學 is among the oldest Chinese characters still in common use. As shown in the figure below, the glyph “象” first appeared in Oracle bone script (c. 1,200 BCE) as an elephant pictogram. The basic shape and composition of “象” remained surprisingly consistent across its three-thousand-plus years of continuous usage: So what does “elephant” has anything to do with symbol and elephant? While it is impossible to get into the heads of Shang dynasty kings (who first used this letter during sacrificial rites), I did found a compelling explanation by searching around Chinese Classical texts. Han Fei (韓非, c. 280 – 233 BC), an influential political philosopher from the Warring States period (475BC - 221BC), wrote the following in his Han Fei Tzu:

Phenomenology on Keren Wang

Dasein, ChatGPT, and the Ritology of AI: Special lecture at East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, June 18 2023 (updated_