There are certain assumptions that are made by a "post-truth" or even a "postmodern" philosophy, and this is the crux of the matter: the assumptions that we are making as a society and as a human race.
The problem IMO is that we have not come to understand the dimensional nature of our lives. Viktor Frankl, for example, noted a three-dimensional ontology of the human being: soma (physical body), psyche (emotions and intellect [he used psyche in English because modern psychology was only addressing the emotions and intellect]) and noos (the noetic, spiritual dimension, which I term the soul). [Moreover, as I have pointed out in keynote addresses to international logotherapy conferences, Frankl also noted a fourth dimension that is beyond the soul--the divine--but that is beyond logotherapy and beyond the need to understand the assumptions I am pointing to here].
The noetic dimension, according to Frankl, is "that which separates us from the animal kingdom" and includes human developments such as meaning, language, music, science. Reductionism occurs whenever we include only soma and psyche (which are essentially automatic functions that have parallels in the animal) and forget our essentially human dimension.
How does this relate? As you have likely noticed in NYT and WaPo (CNN had a video on it this week as well), there comes a point in "chatting" with a computer that it goes off the rails. Universally, we have to understand that we have assumed the computer to be more than it is: a machine that processes 0s and 1s. The computer does not have meaning. It is not sentient. It is deep in our mythology that humankind could create a living, sentient being, but that is exactly what the computer cannot gain--it can never transcend its mechanical self. Yet, we have this illusion (even with a high-ranked Google engineer, who claimed last year it had been achieved) that computers have already become sentient.
The machine may be able to get the right answer, but it has utterly no ability to understand meaning, nor can it discern truth or ethics; it can only rearrange and regurgitate what is already there. However, it is not "getting the right answer" but the pursuit of meaning that should be the goal of education (from educare--to draw forth). As a society, we long for something that "has all the answers" or, more correctly, a shortcut to the hard work that we have to do. When we follow the latter path, our development proceeds in every dimension. It becomes even more problematic when our educational systems have taken a shortcut by focusing on a goal (writing a paper) and not on the lifelong journey (love of learning, love of knowledge, love of wisdom [philo-sophia]). To turn around an aphorism, in the first, we are asking for a fish; in the second, we are inspiring a love for fishing in itself.
IMO you are spot on to trace the problems of ChatGPT (and Marymount) to something that is irreplaceable--the being-ness of the person. The soul. All attempts to mimic sentiency (for that is what it is) show us by their omissions something essential about ourselves (if we are watching). As the Tibetan teacher Djhwal Kuhl noted, "the counterfeit guarantees the real."
Well done, Chris. So much I could pick up on for comment, but suffice to say I'm moved by this presentation of the topic. What I found perhaps most disclosive of the heart of the issue was the student at Brown's comment on how the use of ChatGPT is simply already supported by what's already assumed is practical, useful, and good. The logic supporting ChatGPT's usefulness is just an extension of Grammarly, just an extension of the internet, of computing itself. I feel the weight of that.
My reading right now has been in Gadamer's REASON IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE, a work that's perhaps adjacent to Heidegger's On the Question of Technology, but strikes some more humanistic and Aristotelian notes than MH. In the essay "Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy," Gadamer makes a succinct distinction between what he calls the practical philosophy of Aristotle [and by that I think he means to group together the Ethics and the Politics and the Rhetoric], and the know-how of technicians and experts:
"[Practical philosophy] has to be accountable with its knowledge for the viewpoint in terms of which one thing is to be preferred to another: the relationship to the good. But the knowledge that gives direction to action is essentially called for by concrete situation in which we are to choose the thing to be done; and no learned and mastered technique can spare us the task of deliberation and decision. ... What separates it [practical philosophy] from technical expertise is that it expressly asks the question of the good - for example about the best way of life or about the best constitution of the state. It does not merely master an ability, like technical expertise, whose task is set by an outside authority: by the purpose to be served by what is being produced."
That last distinction in HG's quotation I found to be stunning. In terms of your post, the "outside authority" dimly could be named as capitalism, the bottom-line, but I think more ominous the more one asks about it, like as you suggested by also drew back from in your post, another kind of god.
Oh, one further I wanted to note... the rough equivalent or analogy I suppose for the mission of the Catholic University around cultivating virtue and excellence toward saintliness or the making of saints, I would contend for a Lutheran and/or wider Protestant understanding could be the concept of vocatio, Bereufung, of the calling to be a citizen and human being in community, and that of both simultaneously sinner and saint in formation of reason and faith. (So, Augsburg University in MN where I worked in campus ministry) The category of vocation I think is so important at the end of SK's "purity of heart is to will one thing."
The death of the humanities is a tragedy of major proportions. Hollowness is beating its chest in victory?
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang , but a whimper.”
There are certain assumptions that are made by a "post-truth" or even a "postmodern" philosophy, and this is the crux of the matter: the assumptions that we are making as a society and as a human race.
The problem IMO is that we have not come to understand the dimensional nature of our lives. Viktor Frankl, for example, noted a three-dimensional ontology of the human being: soma (physical body), psyche (emotions and intellect [he used psyche in English because modern psychology was only addressing the emotions and intellect]) and noos (the noetic, spiritual dimension, which I term the soul). [Moreover, as I have pointed out in keynote addresses to international logotherapy conferences, Frankl also noted a fourth dimension that is beyond the soul--the divine--but that is beyond logotherapy and beyond the need to understand the assumptions I am pointing to here].
The noetic dimension, according to Frankl, is "that which separates us from the animal kingdom" and includes human developments such as meaning, language, music, science. Reductionism occurs whenever we include only soma and psyche (which are essentially automatic functions that have parallels in the animal) and forget our essentially human dimension.
How does this relate? As you have likely noticed in NYT and WaPo (CNN had a video on it this week as well), there comes a point in "chatting" with a computer that it goes off the rails. Universally, we have to understand that we have assumed the computer to be more than it is: a machine that processes 0s and 1s. The computer does not have meaning. It is not sentient. It is deep in our mythology that humankind could create a living, sentient being, but that is exactly what the computer cannot gain--it can never transcend its mechanical self. Yet, we have this illusion (even with a high-ranked Google engineer, who claimed last year it had been achieved) that computers have already become sentient.
The machine may be able to get the right answer, but it has utterly no ability to understand meaning, nor can it discern truth or ethics; it can only rearrange and regurgitate what is already there. However, it is not "getting the right answer" but the pursuit of meaning that should be the goal of education (from educare--to draw forth). As a society, we long for something that "has all the answers" or, more correctly, a shortcut to the hard work that we have to do. When we follow the latter path, our development proceeds in every dimension. It becomes even more problematic when our educational systems have taken a shortcut by focusing on a goal (writing a paper) and not on the lifelong journey (love of learning, love of knowledge, love of wisdom [philo-sophia]). To turn around an aphorism, in the first, we are asking for a fish; in the second, we are inspiring a love for fishing in itself.
IMO you are spot on to trace the problems of ChatGPT (and Marymount) to something that is irreplaceable--the being-ness of the person. The soul. All attempts to mimic sentiency (for that is what it is) show us by their omissions something essential about ourselves (if we are watching). As the Tibetan teacher Djhwal Kuhl noted, "the counterfeit guarantees the real."
Well done, Chris. So much I could pick up on for comment, but suffice to say I'm moved by this presentation of the topic. What I found perhaps most disclosive of the heart of the issue was the student at Brown's comment on how the use of ChatGPT is simply already supported by what's already assumed is practical, useful, and good. The logic supporting ChatGPT's usefulness is just an extension of Grammarly, just an extension of the internet, of computing itself. I feel the weight of that.
My reading right now has been in Gadamer's REASON IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE, a work that's perhaps adjacent to Heidegger's On the Question of Technology, but strikes some more humanistic and Aristotelian notes than MH. In the essay "Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy," Gadamer makes a succinct distinction between what he calls the practical philosophy of Aristotle [and by that I think he means to group together the Ethics and the Politics and the Rhetoric], and the know-how of technicians and experts:
"[Practical philosophy] has to be accountable with its knowledge for the viewpoint in terms of which one thing is to be preferred to another: the relationship to the good. But the knowledge that gives direction to action is essentially called for by concrete situation in which we are to choose the thing to be done; and no learned and mastered technique can spare us the task of deliberation and decision. ... What separates it [practical philosophy] from technical expertise is that it expressly asks the question of the good - for example about the best way of life or about the best constitution of the state. It does not merely master an ability, like technical expertise, whose task is set by an outside authority: by the purpose to be served by what is being produced."
That last distinction in HG's quotation I found to be stunning. In terms of your post, the "outside authority" dimly could be named as capitalism, the bottom-line, but I think more ominous the more one asks about it, like as you suggested by also drew back from in your post, another kind of god.
Oh, one further I wanted to note... the rough equivalent or analogy I suppose for the mission of the Catholic University around cultivating virtue and excellence toward saintliness or the making of saints, I would contend for a Lutheran and/or wider Protestant understanding could be the concept of vocatio, Bereufung, of the calling to be a citizen and human being in community, and that of both simultaneously sinner and saint in formation of reason and faith. (So, Augsburg University in MN where I worked in campus ministry) The category of vocation I think is so important at the end of SK's "purity of heart is to will one thing."