Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 430.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 10:43:41 +0000
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Hubert Dreyfus: On the Internet
Dear Humanist scholars,
Hubert Dreyfus: On the Internet. London: Routledge, 2001, 107 pages. is
Reviewed by Claus Elmholdt, Ph.D. Student, Institute of Psychology,
University of Aarhus.
The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus who published the groundbreaking critique
on artificial intelligence, "What computers can't do " (1972), has always
argued for fundamental differences between embodied humans and the
disembodied machines. In his recent book, Dreyfus puts forward a critical
comment on the Internet. Taking a phenomenological perspective he asks,
what is the price that we pay when we leave our bodies behind and go
on-line.
Before continuing, a short update on the authorship may be helpful. As
mentioned above, Dreyfus (1972) was one of the first to launch a critique
of the artificial intelligence research program put forward by Alan Turing
in the 1950's. The critique focuses upon the rationalistic neglect of the
program to see embodiment and situatedness as fundamental aspects of
intelligence. The program, later referred to as Good Old Fashioned
Artificial Intelligence (GOFIA i ), follows a platonic and Cartesian
tradition of seeing abstract intellectual capacities as the most important
aspects of human intelligence. An understanding that leads GOFAI
researchers to programme computers with symbolic representations of rules
and facts, hoping that it would eventually provide the machines with the
capacity for intelligent action. Today the GOFIA research program is in
decline and the main AI researchers have shifted to models of the mind of
greater complexity. In his critique of the GOFAI research program, Dreyfus
follows Nietzsche in arguing that the emotional and intuitive capacities
of our embodied being in the world are fundamental for intelligent action.
Based on the same arguments, Hubert Dreyfus, together with his brother
Stuart Dreyfus (1991), formulated a skill acquisition model consisting of
five modes of functioning from novice to intuitive expert ii . In later
writings, Hubert Dreyfus has discussed the skill acquisition model in
relation to apprenticeship, and argued that access to imitation of experts
is important to acquire the highest mode of functioning - intuitive
expertise (1999). In the book reviewed here, Dreyfus follows the same
phenomenological line of discussion and points his arguments towards the
Internet. The result is a short and thought-provoking book to read for any
net enthusiast and/or scholar who have interest in the topics of learning,
knowledge and identity in relation to the Internet.
To read the full text of the review, please visit the webpage at:
<http://www.psy.au.dk/phd/claus/Dreyfus%20on%20the%20Internet%20-%20book%20review.pdf>
Thank you!
Yours, sincerely
Arun Kumar Tripathi
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Dr Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer,
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London,
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.,
+44 (0)20 7848-2784, ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/,
willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk, w.mccarty@btinternet.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Jan 04 2002 - 06:07:59 EST