Philoscopia

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Argument

The argument from concern

Thinking presupposes that something matters; but nothing can matter to what risks nothing.

Supports

Jonas · The Phenomenon of Life, "Cybernetics and Purpose: A Critique" · 1966

  1. To think is not merely to process information: it is for something to be at stake. A perception orients, a judgment commits, a mistake costs. Remove all stakes and what remains is states following one another, not thought.
  2. But a stake presupposes a being for whom things can go well or badly: a living thing, whose very activity is an effort to keep itself in being, what called . Metabolism is not one property among others, it is a standing need, a dependence on the world.
  3. A machine, by contrast, risks nothing: unplugged, it loses nothing, for nothing was lacking to it. Its "goals" were assigned from outside and are its own in no sense; it does not maintain itself, it is maintained.
  4. Without that risk, the words it handles refer to nothing for it, lacking that : hunger, pain, loss have a meaning for what can hunger, suffer and lose. There is no point of view where nothing is at stake.

Therefore So thought is not an organization detachable from its bearer: it is the activity of an exposed living being, and the most brilliant machine remains a thing to which nothing happens.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all
Entirely
Deepenings
The needful freedom of the living
  1. An organism is not made of fixed matter: the molecules composing it are replaced without respite, and yet it stays the same. It is therefore, in a way, independent of its matter.
  2. But that independence has a price: to remain itself, it must ceaselessly take from outside what lets it continue. Its needful freedom, as calls it, is what makes the world matter to it: what it meets is food, threat, or nothing.
  3. Interest, value, point of view appear there, with the first being that can cease to be. The machine has no such concern: its continuance does not depend on it.

Therefore It is therefore life, not computation, that introduces into the world the fact that something matters to someone.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all
Entirely
Put to the test
The objection from the privilege of flesh
Problems
Thinking, or feelingWould we owe it anything?