The Question Concerning Computing:

1
The QuestionConcerning Computing
8-02-01
Later Heideggerian Musings

• Syed Mustafa Ali
• Computing Department
• The Open University

2
The Why of Questioning

• The biggest single need in computer technology
  is not for improved circuitry or enlarged
  capacity or prolonged memory or miniaturised
  containers. but for better questions and better
  use of the answers.
• Norman Cousins, The Computer and The Poet (1966)

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Some Wayward Questions

• Is computing in crisis ?
• Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
• What is the nature of this crisis ?
• Subsidence (or a shifting of foundations)
• The Second Coming - A Manifesto by D.Gelertner
  (www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelertner/)
• What is computing for it to be in crisis ?
• Can we answer this question given that the
  foundations of computing are shifting ?

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The Way of Questioning

• Questioning as building a way or way-ing
• Way-ing as hermeneutic and circular
• Existentially and historically situated reflexive
  interpretation as a foundation for critical
  inquiry
• A questions and The question
• ontical (factical, phenomenal) vs. ontological
  (foundational, essential) questioning

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A Way Into Way-ing

• The works of Brian Cantwell Smith
• On the Origin of Objects
• (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press 1996)
• The Foundations of Computing
• God, Approximately 4
• One Hundred Billion Lines of C
• Metaphysics for the 21st Century
• www.ageofsig.org/people/bcsmith/papers

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Foundations of Computing

• Objective
• A comprehensive theory of computation
• Criteria for theoretical sufficiency
• Empirical
• Conceptual
• Cognitive

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Foundations of Computing
Heidegger (and Searle) on as-ness

• Empirical (or praxical)
• what people treat as computational is
  computational (computation in the wild)
• Conceptual
• non-circular resolution of grounding problem
  (representationsemantics ? computation)
• Cognitive
• tenable foundation for computational theory of
  mind (or cognitivism)

Intentionality
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Six Construals of Computation

• Formal Symbol Manipulation
• semantics-independent ?!
• Effective Computability
• abstract machine (what can be done, how hard)
• Algorithm Execution
• rule-generated behaviour

• Digital State Mechanics
• automaton with finite disjoint set of internally
  homogeneous states
• Information Processing
• storing, manipulating, displaying information
  (whatever that might be)
• Physical Symbol Systems
• embodied symbolic interaction

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Six Construals of Computation

• When subjected to the empirical demands of
  practice and the conceptual demands of cognitive
  science, all six construals fail - for deep,
  overlapping, but distinct, reasons.

WHY ?
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Problems of Construal

• Essential Differences
• Topological
• Internal/structural/constitutional (deep)
• External/functional/behavioural (surface)
• Semantic
• Symbolic (1 and 3)
• Purely formal (2 and 4)

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Problems of Construal
EFFECTIVE (CAUSAL)

• Types of Semantics

PROCESS (Program behaviour)
?
PROGRAM begin proc Test(n,m) if n0 then end
PRAGMATIC, HERMENEUTIC, or something else (NOT
necessarily causal)
?
WORLD
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Problems of Construal

• Formal systems and Physics
• effective computability as a mathematical theory
  of causality applying to all physical entities
  not just computers
• What does it mean to be formal ?
• precise, abstract, mathematical, a-contextual,
  digital, explicit, syntactic, non-semantic etc

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Problems of Construal

• Furthermore, what is Information ?
• commodity (lay, colloquial usage)
• entropy (algorithmic information theory)
• meaning (semantic content, veridicality)

The computer, darling child of the formal
tradition, outstrips the bounds of the very
tradition that gave rise to it
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Conclusions

• There will be no theory of computation
• because
• Computation is not a (determinate, autonomous)
  subject matter.
• On the contrary,
• Computation is grounded in intentionality

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On The Up-Side Proposal

• Computation as a complex practice, involving the
  design, construction, maintenance, and use of
• intentional systems

From computer science to computer engineering,
computer technology and computing practice
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On The Up-Side Proposal

• Computation as a complex practice, involving the
  design, construction, maintenance, and use of
• intentional systems

From computer science to ?
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On The Down-Side Critique

• We dont have an adequate theory of
  intentionality (or as-ness)
• because
• We dont have an adequate theory of ontology

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A Plea From Here
Is there anyone we can turn to for help ?
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A Response From Where
YES! But first we need to know that
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Ontology is the study of
BEING
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The Single Question
SOURCE http//www.theuniversityconcourse.com/I,3,
3-12-1996/Marra.htm
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Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) The Good, The Bad
The Ugly

• THE GOOD
• German Existential Phenomenologist
• Author of Being Time (1927)
• Perhaps the most important philosopher of the
  20th century
• THE BAD
• Difficulty of his works
• Is Heidegger being profound or is he a
  philosophical charlatan ?
• THE UGLY
• Member of the National Socialist Party
  (1933-1934)
• To what extent (if at all) does his politics
  contaminate his philosophy ?

He who thinks greatly, must err greatly
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What is Phenomenology ?

• DEFINITION Phenomenology (Husserl)
• The systematic analysis of consciousness and its
  contents
• PROBLEMS
• Assumed Cartesian dualism (self and world)
• Non-contextual view of self (bracketing of the
  world)
• Prioritisation of consciousness vis-à-vis
  intentionality

FRAME PROBLEM
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Phenomenological Ontology

• DEFINITION Phenomenology (Heidegger)
• The systematic analysis of Being and its
  structures
• Existential (situated, indexical)
• Hermeneutic (reflexive)
• Historical (critical)
• Okay, but what is ?

BEING
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Being in Early Heidegger

• NEGATIVE DEFINITION
• Being is not a being
• not spirit
• not substance
• not matter
• not energy
• not information
• Being is not a generic predicate

• POSITIVE DEFINITION
• Being is as-ness
• Being is the how of presencing of that which
  presences
• Being is

Intelligibility
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Metaphysics vs. Ontology

• Metaphysics
• (Onto-theo-logy)
• Being as the first and most universal ground
  common to all beings
• Being as the highest ground above all beings and
  the ground of itself

• Ontology
• (Onto-phenomeno-logy)
• Being as always the being of a being
• Being as specific to the being in question
• Being as finite and dependent on Dasein

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Who or what is Dasein ?

• Dasein (Openness-for-Being)
• That being for whom Being is an issue
• Dasein is being-in-the-world (in-volved)
• NB This in is not spatial but situational
• E.g. compare being-in-a-box with being-in-a-fix
• Dasein is the condition of the discoverability of
  the beings of the world

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What is The World ?

• The world is not the physical universe
• The world is not a thing
• The world is a horizon of encounter between
  Dasein and beings
• The world is a network of meanings

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The World in Early Heidegger

• The world as a network of relations of
  purposefulness (or functionality)
• Beings as equipment (ready-to-hand)
• Pragmatic conception of world
• Anthropocentric conception of world

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E.g. The world of the student
The student and his/her world (only part of which
was shown) disappears when an attempt is made to
describe them in causal, scientific terms
(space-time-energy-matter)
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Heidegger Reaching the parts other philosophers
cannot reach

• It seems that anything and everything can be
  looked at phenomenologically, from
• history
• Heidegger and the Role of the Historian, David
  Kosalka, www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/8579/heid.htm
  
• to
• highway bridges
• Highway Bridges and Feasts Heidegger and
  Borgmann on How to Affirm Technology,
  H.L.Dreyfus, http//socrates.berkeley.edu/frege/d
  reyfus/borgman.html
• to
• hip hop !
• IN THE WORLD WITH HIPHOP AND HEIDEGGER A
  Philosophical Investigation into "I'm Feeling
  You, Charles Mudede, www.thestranger.com/2000-10-
  05/art.html

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The Question Concerning Computing

• Does the pragmatic (or equipmental)
  interpretation of world enable us to determine
  the essence of computing ?
• Or is the functional interpretation of beings
  (including computers and computation) merely
  preparatory ?

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The Turn
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Being in Later Heidegger

• Being as the how of presencing of that which
  presences
• The meaning of Being as intelligibility
  (as-ness)
• The truth of Being as unconcealment (Aletheia)
• The how of unconcealment as ...

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The Same-ing of The Fourfold
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The World-ing of The World
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The Thing-ing of The Thing
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Computing Beyond Computation

• If Brian Cantwell Smith is right then

The essence of computing is by no means
anything computational (or computable)

• What is the essence of computing?

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Computing as ...

• Science ?
• Science and Reflection (1954)
• Technology ?
• The Question Concerning Technology (1955)
• Engineering ?
• Building Dwelling Thinking (1951)
• Art ?
• The Origin of The Work of Art (1935)

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Computing as Technology
However, the essence of technology is by no means
anything technological

• Metaphysical
• (causality)
• Functional artifacts

• Ontological
• (intelligibility)
• That which is brought-forth via another
• A way of letting unconceal

Aletheia
Poiesis
Techne
Technology
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Computing as Engineering

• Metaphysical
• (causality)
• Conception and Construction

• Ontological
• (intelligibility)
• Building (unfolding), Dwelling (preserving the
  fourfold in things so as to bring forth locations)

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Poetry and Poetry

• Poetry belongs to the realm of fantasy.
• Poetry, by contrast, is a measuring of mans
  belonging-to (or dwelling within) the same-ing of
  the fourfold.
• Crucially, poetry involves the visible inclusion
  of the alien (absent) in the sight of the
  familiar (present).

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The Poetic and The Unpoetic

• Poetry, as the authentic measuring of the
  dimension of dwelling, is the primal form of
  building.
• Our unpoetic dwelling, its incapacity to take
  the measure, derives from a curious excess of
  frantic measuring and calculating.

Poetically Man Dwells (1951)
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A Tentative Answer

• Computing as a way of presencing via another
• Computing as bringing-forth (poiesis)
• Computing as a way of presencing in the same-ing
  of the fourfold
• Computing as dwelling (poesis)

The essence of computing as Poetic-Poiesis and
Poietic-Poesis
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AfterthoughtsWorld-ing - The Danger
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Afterthoughts Thing-ing - The Saving-Power