Artificial intelligence (AI) is viewed as one of the technological advances that will reshape modern societies and their relations. While the design and deployment of systems that continually adapt hold the promise of far-reaching, positive change, they simultaneously pose significant risks, especially to already vulnerable people.
This work explores the meaning of AI, and the important role of critical understanding and its phenomenological foundation in shaping its ongoing advances. The values, power, and magic of reason are central to this discussion. Critical theory has used historical hindsight to explain the patterns of power that shape our intellectual, political, economic, and social worlds, and the discourse on AI that surrounds these worlds. The authors also delve into niche topics in philosophy such as transcendental self-awareness, post-humanism, and concepts of space-time and computer logic.
By embedding a critical phenomenological orientation within their technical practices, AI communities can develop foresight and tactics that can better align research and technology development with established ethical principles - centering vulnerable people who continue to bear the brunt of the negative impacts of innovation and scientific progress. The creation of a critical-technical practice of AI will lead to a permanent revolution in social, scientific, and political communities. The years ahead will usher in a wave of new scientific breakthroughs and technologies driven by AI research, making it incumbent upon AI communities to strengthen the social contract through ethical foresight, a capability that only phenomenology can deliver, ultimately supporting future technologies that enable greater well-being, with the goal of delivering practical truths.
A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence: A Phenomenological Foundation is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex debate and phenomenology surrounding AI and its growing role in our society.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Problem of Artificial Intelligence
- Introduction
- Algorithmic Domination
- Advances in AI
- Health
- Finance
- The Most Pressing Dangers of AI
- Causality
- How Has Public Sentiment Toward AI Evolved?
- Common Sense
- Co-Development
- The Meaning of AI
- Questions and Themes
- The Influence of Phenomenology on Artificial Intelligence
- Hubert Dreyfus
- Neural Networks
- Francisco Varela
- Autopoietic Dynamics
- Niklas Luhmann
- Ethics
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 2 Phenomenology and Empirical Research
- Introduction
- The Dramatic Structure of Awareness
- The Role of Empirical Facts
- Language and Awareness
- Levels of Linguistic Fields
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 3 Communicative Competence: the Transcendental and Understanding
- Introduction
- Discourse
- Higher Understanding and Cultural Tradition
- Communicative Competence and Synchrony
- The Law of Contradiction and Its Limit
- The Canons of Scientific Logic in Question
- The Hermeneutical Imperative
- What Is the Transcendental Position?
- An Explication of the Transcendental: the Ahistorical and Atemporal
- The Transcendental Function in Scientific Presentation
- Complementarity of Understanding and the Transcendental
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 4 Transcendental Self-Awareness and Time
- Introduction
- Metaphysics of Reason
- Field Awareness
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 5 the Magic of Reason: Wild Metaphysics
- Introduction
- ENS Realisimus
- Identity
- Metaphysics and Ontology
- Attentional Modification
- Formal Region
- Possibility
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 6 Machine Logic and Values As A Self-Generating System
- Introduction
- Logic and Fact
- First Thesis
- Second Thesis
- Formalization
- Signitive Space and Time
- Valuative Nexus
- Codes of Network Society
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 7 the Internet of Things and Temporal Reflex
- Introduction: First Things, First
- Interconnecting
- Innovation and Time
- Selectivity
- Time Reflex
- Time Reflex and World
- Emergence
- Speculation
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 8 Can I - Can You - Can We?
- Introduction
- Universal and Particular
- Concrete Generality
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 9 the Multi-Discursive Subject
- Introduction
- The Multi-Discursive World
- Signitive Space-Time
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 10 the Limits of Artificial Intelligence and the Public
- Introduction
- Enlightenments
- Contingency
- Artificial Intelligence: Critique
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 11 Conditions For Public Decisions
- Introduction
- Universal Conditions
- Subjected Subject
- Signitive Space and Time
- Method
- Conclusion
- References
Chapter 12 Radical Embodied Truths For Artificial Intelligence
- Introduction
- Truths
- Conclusion
- References
- Subject Index
Author
- Algis Mickunas
- Joseph Pilotta
