Intelligence and Spirit

Description

A critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism that formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things. In Intelligence and Spirit Reza Negarestani formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things, a real movement capable of overcoming any state of affairs that, from the perspective of the present, may appear to be the complete totality of history. Intelligence pierces through what seems to be the totality or the inevitable outcome of its history, be it the manifest portrait of the human or technocapitalism as the alleged pilot of history. Building on Hegel's account of Geist as a multiagent conception of mind and on Kant's transcendental psychology as a functional analysis of the conditions of possibility of mind, Negarestani provides a critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism. The assumptions of the former are exposed by way of a critique of the transcendental structure of experience as a tissue of subjective or psychological dogmas; the claims of the latter regarding the ubiquity of mind or the inevitable advent of an unconstrained superintelligence are challenged as no more than ideological fixations which do not stand the test of systematic scrutiny. This remarkable fusion of continental philosophy in the form of a renewal of the speculative ambitions of German Idealism and analytic philosophy in the form of extended thought-experiments and a philosophy of artificial languages opens up new perspectives on the meaning of human intelligence and explores the real potential of posthuman intelligence and what it means for us to live in its prehistory. Contents Figures Acknowledgements 1. Between Conception and Transformation It is only what it does Functions and Multilevel Structural Constraints Functional Integration: Phases of Geist Self-Relation: A Function in Progress Self-Consciousness as Conception and Transformationin an Objective World A Series of Transformations History as the Elaboration of What it Means To Be An Artefact of the Concept A Note on Theory, Mind’s Structuring Function, and Ratiocinating Powers Selves as Functional Items as Artefacts of Mind The Sapience Controversy Rational Integration, Judgement, and Generation of Further Abilities Historical Awareness as an Essential Constructive and Critical Ability The Dasein of Geist The Necessary and Sufficient Links Between Conception and Transformation Geist at the Edge of Intelligibility 2. An Outside View of Ourselves as Experimental AGI (Problems, Concepts, and Models) Climbing with Language Beyond Extreme Scenarios Hard vs. Soft Parochialism An Outside View of Ourselves as a Toy Model AGI Formalizing a Big Toy Universe 3. This I, or We or It, the Thing, Which Speaks (Forms of Intuition) The Toy Universe of an Embodied Automaton The Virtuous Circle of Analogy The Automaton’s Story, a Thought Experiment Constructing a Lego Modelin the Style of Kant’s Threefold Synthesis A Digression On Modelling Figurative Syntheses Seeing1 With the Automaton Getting Stuff In Perspective The Automaton’s Temporal Perspectival Awareness Time and Memory 4. Some Unsettling Kantian News, as Delivered by Boltzmann (An Excursion into Time) Freezing the Flux Boltzmann’s Copernican Shakedown of the Time-conscious Subject Inductive Dogmas and Cognitive Biases of Time-Asymmetry What Now? Metaphysics of Time as Logic of Spirit Time, Reality, and The View From Nowhen 5. This I, or We or It, the Thing, Which Speaks (Objectivity and Thought) Ascent to the Infantile Infant AGI As If Raising a Child Global Pedagogical Project 6. This I, or We or It, the Thing, Which Speaks (Dasein of Geist) Realization of Language Pictures, Signs and Symbols Sign-Vehicles and Symbol-Design An Acoustic Experiment in the Production of Symbols Generative Processes and The Hierarchyof Syntactic Complexity Base Syntactic Abilities 7. This I, or We or It, the Thing, Which Speaks (Language as Interaction as Computation) The Pragmatic Interface Enter the Copycat: Interaction as Game as Computation From Semantics of Interaction to Interaction as the Game of Semantics Keep It in Focus: A Dialogue in Eight Acts Formalism and the Pure Autonomy of the Formal Logic as an Organon and as WorldBuilding Dogmas of the Experiential Upward to the Semantic Heavens Machines Unboxed 8. Philosophy of Intelligence Datum 1. We Exercise Datum 2. Philosophy, the Way of Worldbuilding Datum 3. Actualizing the Possibility of Thinking Datum 4. Navigating Thought’s Ramified Paths Datum 5. Thought and the Artefact Datum 6. Philosophy as an Archimedean Lever for Lifting Intelligence and Moving the World Datum 7. Crafting the Ultimate Form Datum 8. The Yearning for the Better Datum 9. Intelligence as Risk and Time Datum 10. A View from Nowhere and Nowhen, or Philosophy As Intelligence and Time Appendix: Quandaries of Induction in Philosophy of Knowledge, Philosophy of Mind,and Artificial Intelligence A Humean Provocation Uniformity, Regularity, and Memory The Dissolution of Hume’s Problem and Its Rebirth Bluffing Your Way Through Simplicity Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects