On the Impossibility of Kantbots and Seeing What’s Staring Us Right in the Face.

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On the Impossibility of Kantbots and Seeing What’s Staring Us Right in the Face

The history of Kant’s life is difficult to describe. For he had neither a life nor a history. He led a mechanically ordered, almost abstract, bachelor life in a quiet out-of-the-way lane in Königsberg, an old city on the northeast border of Germany. I do not believe that the great clock of the Cathedral there performed its task with less passion and less regularity than its fellow citizen, Immanuel Kant…. –What a strange contrast did this man’s outward life present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts! Indeed, if the people of Königsberg had had the least awareness of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt far more awful dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can kill only the body. But the people saw in him nothing more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him. (Heine, 1962: vol. II, p. 461, boldfacing added; see also Kuehn, 2001: p. 14)

Men are not machines, not even ghost-ridden machines. They are men—a tautology which is sometimes worth remembering. (Ryle, 1949/1963: p. 79)

Consciousness is the act or process of subjective experience. For example, as you’re reading these very words, then you’re enacting the subjective experience of reading these very words. Therefore, you enacted the consciousness of reading those very words. And as soon as you’d read, or re-read, the preceding two sentences, then you were also conscious of your first-order consciousness of reading those very words. So you were self-consciously conscious (i.e., meta-conscious) of reading those very words. Let’s assume that you’re a human animal—i.e., a “man” in Gilbert Ryle’s quaint 1940s Oxonian oldspeak—and also know that you’re a human animal. Therefore, since you’re a human animal and also know it, then you already self-consciously know that human consciousness exists—i.e., your own human consciousness—and you also already self-consciously know what the specific character of human consciousness is, by direct acquaintance with it. In turn, the primary philosophical and scientific problem of consciousness is how to explain the existence and specific character of human consciousness in this actual, natural world. There’s a secondary philosophical and scientific problem of consciousness, which is how to generalize that explanation to anything, human or non-human, that’s capable of consciousness, but it can’t be solved until the primary problem of consciousness has already been solved.

Over and above consciousness and self-consciousness, but also including them, intelligence is the complex mental act or process consisting of the more basic mental acts or processes of (i) consciousness, (ii) self-consciousness, (iii) sensible cognition (i.e., sense perception, imagination, and episodic memory), (iv) intellectual cognition (i.e., conceptualizing, thinking, understanding, judging, logical inference, and semantic memory), (v) caring (i.e., desire, emotion, and feeling—aka the affects), (vi) free will, and (vii) practical agency (including instrumental or non-instrumental practical reasoning, choosing, and acting). So intelligence is rational mindedness. For example, in reading these very words and also understanding their meanings and logical implications, then you’re enacting intelligence or rational mindedness. Indeed, the act or process of reading is a paradigmatic enactment of intelligence or rational mindedness (Hanna, 2023a). Let’s again assume that you’re a human animal and also know that you’re a human animal. Therefore, since you’re a human animal and also know it, then you already self-consciously know that human intelligence exists—i.e., your own human intelligence—and you also already self-consciously know what the specific character of human intelligence is, by direct acquaintance with it. In turn, the primary philosophical and scientific problem of intelligence is how to explain the existence and specific character of human intelligence in this actual, natural world. As in the case of the problem of consciousness, there’s a secondary philosophical and scientific problem of intelligence, which is how to generalize that explanation to anything, human or non-human, that’s capable of intelligence, but, similarly, it can’t be solved until the primary problem of intelligence has already been solved.

How can we solve the primary problems of consciousness and intelligence? Well, although it might seem so obvious as to be “tautological” in Ryle’s terminology, in fact we already know something extremely important about human consciousness and intelligence. We already know how to produce human consciousness and human intelligence in this actual, natural world, namely, by means of normal human reproduction and normal human biological development. For all healthy, normal human animals possess innate capacities for consciousness and intelligence, and all healthy, normal, mature human animals enact those capacities during their lifetimes. As a species, we’ve been doing this for roughly 300,000 years, and on the whole, especially since we started engaging in the act or process of reading about 6000 years ago, we’re pretty good at producing consciousness and intelligence.

Nowadays, moreover, we also have pretty good scientific explanations of normal human reproduction and of normal human biological development, as complex dynamic living organismic systems (see, e.g., Hanna and Maiese, 2009: section 7.3; Torday and Miller Jr, 2020). Moreover, as per the first two paragraphs of this essay, we already self-consciously know that human consciousness and human intelligence exist, and we also self-consciously already know what the specific characters of human consciousness and human intelligence are, by direct acquaintance with them, for example, in the act or process of reading. Therefore, the unified solution to the problems of consciousness and intelligence is staring us right in the face: human consciousness and human intelligence are nothing more and nothing less than than the essentially embodied, complex dynamic living organismic global forms or structures of the complex dynamic living organismic systems of healthy, normal human animals, as ineluctably embedded in their larger natural and social environments (Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2011; Maiese and Hanna, 2019; Torday, Miller Jr, and Hanna, 2020). This unified solution, in turn, is hylomorphic (i.e., it invokes the necessary complementarity of causally activating and guiding form or structure and causally efficient matter or stuffing) and organicist (i.e., it’s anti-mechanistic and focused on organismic life), and as such, was anticipated by both Aristotle and Kant:

The soul (anima) is the first actuality of a natural body that has life potentially. (Aristotle, 1968: II.i.412a22)

Life is the subjective condition of all our possible experience. (Kant, 1783/2004: p. 87; Ak 4: 335)

Mind for itself is entirely life (the principle of life itself). (Kant, 1790/2000: p. 159; Ak5: 278)

One essential implication of the unified hylomorphic organicist solution to the problems of consciousness and intelligence is that consciousness and intelligence are not localized or located in the human brain or in any other proper part of the human body, nor are they anything that’s actually or possibly detachable from the whole healthy, normal human animal, as ineluctably embedded in its larger natural and social environment. Therefore, to look for consciousness or intelligence in the human brain—or in any proper part of the human body for that matter—or to look for it in something that’s actually or possibly detachable from the whole healthy, normal human animal, as ineluctably embedded in its larger natural and social environment, is just like looking for the social institution of a university in its central administration building, or in any of its classroom or office buildings, in the university president, in the administration, in the human resources staff, in the faculty, in the students, in the academic assistance staff, in the custodial and maintenance staff, in the lawns or athletic fields, or in any other proper parts of the whole university as a social institution, or in something that’s actually or possibly detachable from the whole university as a social institution—“the spirit of the university” or whatever. As Ryle pointed out in The Concept of Mind, however, that’s simply a category mistake, and precisely the sort of category mistake that René Descartes made when he localized or located human consciousness or intelligence in the pineal gland, and when he identified them with the separable or separate immortal soul (Descartes, 1641-1642/1984; Ryle, 1949/1963: ch. 1). Ryle called this “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine” (Ryle, 1949/1963: p. 17), and it’s crucial to note that not only Cartesian substance dualists but also Cartesian mechanistic materialists, alike, are equal but opposite subscribers to the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine. Again, human consciousness and human intelligence aren’t localized or located in proper parts of the human body, nor are they actually or possibly detachable from whole healthy, normal human animal, as ineluctably embedded in its natural and social environments. Instead, as I asserted above, they’re nothing more and nothing less than than the essentially embodied, complex dynamic living organismic global forms or structures of the complex dynamic living organismic systems of healthy, normal human animals, as ineluctably embedded in their larger natural and social environments (Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2011; Maiese and Hanna, 2019; Torday, Miller Jr, and Hanna, 2020).

Another essential implication of the unified hylomorphic organicist solution to the primary problems of consciousness and intelligence is that necessarily, no machine, no mechanical functional system, and in particular, no digital computing system or digital technology, can ever be conscious or intelligent, nor can its operations ever equal or exceed the achievements of conscious, intelligent human animals. Therefore, the philosophical and scientific doctrine of computational functionalism, and also the philosophical and scientific thesis of strong artificial intelligence (see, e.g., Block, 1980: part 3; Kim, 2011: ch. 6), which presupposes computational functionalism, are equally necessarily false and impossible. The widespread contemporary dogmatic false belief that the thesis of strong artificial intelligence is true is what I call the myth of artificial intelligence (Hanna, 2023b), and it’s intimately related to the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine in two ways: it also presupposes Cartesian mechanistic materialism, and it’s every bit as deeply and dogmatically ideologically embedded in contemporary philosophy, formal and natural science, and sociopolitical culture (Hanna and Paans, 2020).

To demonstrate all this, let’s consider the already-mentioned philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was born in 1724 and died in 1804. Although he was notoriously mocked by the poet Heinrich Heine, as per the first epigraph of this essay, who described Kant in his old age as nothing but a philosophical clockwork puppet in a wig and professor’s garb, Kant was in fact a healthy, normal human animal who was produced and raised to maturity by his parents, Mr and Mrs Kant, aka Johann Georg Kant and Anna Regina Kant (Kuehn, 2001: ch. 1). Kant was therefore conscious and intelligent. Kant was also a formal and natural scientist, and above all he was the greatest and most important modern philosopher after Descartes (Hanna, 2023d), who wrote what is undeniably (even to its critics and enemies) the greatest and most important philosophical book since Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy appeared in 1641-1642, namely, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, 1781/1787/1997), along with many other important scientific and philosophical texts (Kuehn, 2001: chs. 4-8). Now, the following question arises: could Kant ever be effectively modelled by any actual or really possible digital computing system or digital technology—for convenience, let’s call it a Kantbot—in such a way (i) that this Kantbot is conscious and intelligent, and (ii) that all of Kant’s scientific and philosophical achievements are equalled or exceeded by this Kantbot? If so, that would entail this Kantbot’s equalling or exceeding Kant’s achievements of writing the Critique of Pure Reason and also the famous and highly influential essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” which ends with this sentence, which of course is directly relevant to this essay:

When nature has unwrapped, from under this hard shell, the seed for which she cares most tenderly, namely the propensity and calling to think freely, the latter gradually works back upon the mentality of the people (which thereby gradually becomes capable of freedom in acting) and eventually even upon the principles of government, which finds it profitable to itself to treat the human being, who is now more than a machine, in keeping with his dignity. (Kant, 1784/1996: p. 22, Ak 8: 41-42)

Again: could there ever be a Kantbot such that it’s conscious, intelligent, and able to equal or exceed Kant’s actual scientific and philosophical achievements? Answer: No, absolutely not, and in fact the very idea of it is nothing but nonsense on stilts. Here are nine reasons in support of that strong claim.

First, a Kantbot could never be either conscious or self-conscious, since a Kantbot, as a digital computing system or digital technology, is a machine, whereas Kant was a conscious and self-conscious human animal, hence a living organismic complex dynamic system, and not a machine, and only animals can be conscious or self-conscious, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2011; Torday, Miller Jr, and Hanna, 2020).

Second, a Kantbot could never possess the unified set of capacities jointly constitutive of Kant’s intelligence, since a Kantbot, as a digital computing system or digital technology, is a machine, whereas Kant was a conscious and self-conscious human animal, hence a living organismic complex dynamic system, and not a machine, and only conscious and self-conscious animals can possess the unified set of mental capacities, faculties, or powers that are jointly constitutive of intelligence, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2015, 2018; Landgrebe and Smith, 2022).

Third, there are some illegible, meaningless, or nonsensical texts that no digital computing system or digital technology can parse or read, yet Kant could indeed parse and read such texts, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna, 2023e).

Fourth, there are some well-specified sets of circumstances in which digital computing systems or digital technology cannot discriminate between left-handed and right-handed but otherwise identical counterparts (aka “incongruent counterparts,” aka “enantiomorphs”), yet Kant could indeed discriminate between them—in fact, Kant discovered the “incongruent counterparts” argument (Hanna, 2015: section 2.5)—hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna, 2023f).

Fifth, digital computing systems or digital technology can’t carry out functions or operations in the logico-mathematical sense over domains containing objects or other items that are either non-denumerably finite or non-denumerably infinite, vague, holistic, or entangled, or for which the rule-following problem holds, including the halting problem, yet Kant, as both a rationalistic logician and an intuitionistic mathematician, could indeed perform these very functions or operations, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna, 2001: chs. 4-5, 2006a: chs. 6-7, 2006b: ch. 6, 2015: chs. 6-8, 2023g).

Sixth, no digital computing system or digital technology can carry out functions or operations in the logico-mathematical sense beyond the formal limitations determined by Kurt Gödel’s two incompleteness theorems, yet Kant, as both a rationalistic logician and an intuitionistic mathematician, could indeed perform these very functions or operations beyond the limits of incompleteness, hence Kantbots are impossible (Gödel, 1931/1967; Hanna, 2001: chs. 4-5, 2006a: chs. 6-7, 2006b: ch. 6, 2015: chs. 6-8, 2023g; Keller, 2023).

Seventh, no digital computing system or digital technology can perform categorical improvements or upgrades of the intrinsic specific character or quality of the informational inputs, premises, or materials with which they’re supplied—for example, from meaninglessness to meaningfulness, or from falsity to truth—yet Kant, as not only both a rationalistic logician and an intuitionistic mathematician, but also the greatest and most important modern philosopher after Descartes, could creatively transform these informational inputs, premises, or other materials into categorically improved or upgraded informational outputs, conclusions, or other products, in at least ten different ways, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna, 2001: chs. 4-5, 2006a: chs. 6-7, 2006b: ch. 6, 2015: chs. 6-8, 2023d, 2023h, 2023i).

Eighth, no digital computing system or digital technology can ever actually have, or even effectively model or simulate, the specifically human affects—i.e., the desires, emotions, and feelings—that all conscious and intelligent human animals can achieve, enact, or experience, especially including what I call the desire for self-transcendence and deep happiness or principled authenticity, whereas Kant, who was a conscious and intelligent human animal, could indeed achieve, enact, or experience all of these, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna, 2023j).

Ninth, and finally, no digital computing system or digital technology can ever freely pretend to be a digital computing system or digital technology, not only (i) because such systems or technology—as deterministic or indeterministic automata—can never have consciousness, self-conciousness, free will, or practical agency, all of which are required by the intentional act of pretending, but also (ii) because, as a matter of conceptual necessity, nothing can ever pretend to be what it already is, but instead can only ever pretend to be what it actually is not, whereas Kant, who was a conscious and intelligent human animal, could freely pretend to be a machine, hence Kantbots are impossible (Hanna, 2023k).

If what I’ve argued is sound, then recognizing the unified hylomorphic organicist solution to the primary problems of consciousness and intelligence consists in freely performing the following three-step creative philosophical dance.

First step: critically and reflectively liberating oneself from the category mistake that all Cartesian substance dualists and Cartesian mechanistic materialists alike have committed, the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine (Ryle, 1949/1963: ch. 1).

Second step: critically and reflectively liberating oneself from the myth of artificial intelligence (Hanna, 2023b, 2023c).

Third step: attentively and open-mindedly seeing what’s staring us right in the face, namely, the simple yet profoundly significant truth that human consciousness and human intelligence are nothing more and nothing less than the essentially embodied, complex dynamic living organismic global forms or structures of the complex dynamic living organismic systems of healthy, normal human animals, as ineluctably embedded in their larger natural and social environments (Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2011; Maiese and Hanna, 2019; Torday, Miller Jr, and Hanna, 2020).

But, what if, for whatever reason, you simply can’t (kant) yet either liberate yourself from the ideological clutches of the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine or the myth of artificial intelligence, or see what’s staring us right in the face? That is: what if, for whatever reason, currently it’s simply impossible for you to see what’s staring you right in the face? My proposal is that you then try this supplementary creative philosophical dance move at least once: look into a mirror and pretend to be a Kantbot, and then self-consciously critically reflect on what you’ve just done.

Then, when you’ve successfully performed this supplementary creative philosophical dance move, you’ll recognize that you’re neither a ghost, nor a machine, nor will your actual or possible authentically creative achievements ever be superseded by the operations of some digital computing system or digital technology, no matter how sophisticated it is and no matter how many bells and whistles have been tacked onto it by some obscenely rich technocratic capitalist corporation. For you’re essentially more than a ghost and also essentially more than a machine, precisely because you’re nothing more and nothing less than an essentially embodied, conscious, and intelligent animal that’s biologically human, finite, fallible and more generally thoroughly normatively imperfect. We’re all and only those conscious and intelligent “human all-too-human” animals in the mirror, staring us right in the face. So get used to it. And once we’ve gotten used to it, then we’ll finally know ourselves in the Socratic sense.[i]

NOTE

[i] I’m grateful to Elma Berisha and Bhupinder Singh Anand for thought-provoking correspondence on and around the main topics of this essay.

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