What Swift Has to Teach Us About Digitized Mind and Text Machines (III)

Swift's speculative learning machine is a fictional mechanical device for automatic text generation. The purpose of the machine it to “write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, law, mathematics, and theology, etc.” Swift wrote about it in his Gulliver's Travels.

The novel came into existence in the general cultural context of suspicion towards the emerging world of machines in the XVIII century. Swift was no exception. In the end, it is the very business of the intellectual to doubt, not to take things on their face value. “Perhaps you might wonder to see me employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical operations”, says the inventor of the machine, professor of the fictional Lagado Academy. Swift was essentially doubting about the possibility to acquire knowledge by purely mechanical means.

Philosophy – spirit VS flesh

Why? For philosophers, at least from Plato on, knowledge always represented the highest and finest achievement of the human spirit. What is more, the very essence of the human mind was seen to consist in knowing. The knowledge itself was conceptualized as theoria – looking at things with the mind's eye. Now, the Latin word for Greek theoria is speculatio. The word “speculative” literally means “to look, to see, to gaze, to stare”. But in the philosophical jargon it designates the looking activity divorced from the sensual (perception). So, the speculation can be described as an intellectual looking at things. In addition, it is looking at intellectual things, things that do not exist in space and time, things like God, numbers, the idea of justice, etc.

Every machine is a mechanical device. And every mechanical device is made of some material. So, the machine is a material device. Simply put, it means that it exists as a concrete individual thing. It occupies some position in space and time. But the essence of spirituality resides in the intellectuality: intellectual speculation of intellectual things. Being material, machine must be opposed to the spirituality. Where there is machine, there is no spirit, and vice versa.

That is why the professor, inventor of the machine says to Gulliver: “Perhaps you might wonder to see me employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical operations.” Knowledge is something theoretical and not practical. Knowledge is something spiritual and not mechanical. 
 

Descartes – mind VS body-machine

But there is more to it. And in order to understand why we have to go back to Descartes (XVII century). He is the one who redefined the old Christian problem of flesh VS spirit into a more modern one. That of the body VS mind. What is absolutely new in the historical sense is that he defined the flesh as mechanism. So, body is a flesh became mechanical. Being mechanical now explains what it means to be material.

Descartes' philosophy is known as dualism. That means that there are only two kinds of things in the universe. And for Descartes everything was either a mind or a body, but not both. So, the spirit could never be material and body could never be spiritual. Corollary: there is no such thing as a spiritual machine. 
 

Cartesian method

The history is very ironic. And philosophy is no exception to that. Because the very essence of the Cartesian method – Descartes Latin name was Cartesius – made possible reflexion on thinking machines. Descartes was philosophically engaged in finding the perfect scientific method. The idea was simple. We all have the common sense that tells us perfectly what is true and what isn't. The only problem is that we do not use it well. So, let's find a method that would be trivially easy to apply, so that even a man with humble intellectual capacities could use it to find the truths. All of them. Even the most profound ones. The point is, with a method, whose workings consist in application of simple discrete steps one has to be no genius in order to find out even the most complicated truths.

The only thing one has to have is a patience and a concentrated mind. That means that the study is nevertheless required on the part of the prospective scholar. 
 

Speculative learning machine

But wait! If even the man with no genius at all could solve the difficult intellectual problems by making easy to follow simple discrete steps why wouldn't it be possible for the machine too? You just have to construct a machine that can reproduce these Cartesian method-like steps. And that is exactly what Swift's speculative learning machine does. 

It even pushes Descartes' idea one step further. Because not only one doesn't have to be a genius in order to write books in philosophy, poetry, etc. but also the usage of his machine dispenses one from the “study”. Only thing required is a little bodily labor to push and pull levers driving the machine. The machine itself applies the rules of the method and outputs truths in the form of the string of letters.

There is a strong analogy here between the tool-machine and mind-machine relationship. The tool demands the skill and labor on the part of the artisan. The machine dispenses the worker from both. Now it is the machine which skillfully handles tools. Man does not have to work, except for the “little bodily effort” needed to operate the machine. In the case of our speculative learning machine, the machine is doing the thinking, the truth discovery. It is gathering the knowledge for us. We do not need to be genius in order to use it. But we don't need either to indulge ourselves in a tedious and long study. We just need to put a “little bodily effort” in order to operate the machine.

 

Looking forward to the spiritual machines

The speculative learning machine was never made. Nevertheless, we made lot of thinking machines. Thinking in the sense of the application of simple discrete rules that are finite in number. Those machines are computers and their thinking is called “algorithmic problem solving”. So, at least in this sense some machines of our age do speculate.

In the next article we will go one step further. We will talk not only about machines that think, but also about machines that are longing to be spiritual. We will analyze android's quest for religion as it is described by Phillip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

What Swift Has to Teach Us About Digitized Mind and Text Machines (II)

In the novel Gulliver's Travels there is a city called Laputa. It is the hometown of the Lagado Academy. The king of Laputa has ordered its establishment because the city was very poor. He intended the Academy to be a powerful engine of the economic development. Instead of it, the Academy was a home to what seemed like the most strange and useless experiments. 

One of those experiments focuses on a construction of the instrument that the narrator describes somewhat ironically as a “wonderful machine”. Although not the “engine” of the Laputa's economic development, it proves to be the very core of the contemporary productivity's growth. Not only that it bears similarities with the modern day computers, but also with the ways they simulate human intellectual activity. 

Swift wrote his novel when the world of machines was emerging. In the third part of this essay we will philosophically analyze his fictional device. But before that, let's first read this passage, wondrous in its own right. 

Illustration: Grandville

We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided.

The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of the room, he said, "Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical operations. But the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang in any other man's head. Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down.

Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and the professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich materials, to give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their several collections.

He assured me "that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech."

I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his great communicativeness; and promised, "if ever I had the good fortune to return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the sole inventor of this wonderful machine;" the form and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed. I told him, "although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner; yet I would take such caution, that he should have the honour entire, without a rival."

 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Part 3, Chapter 5) 

To be continued... 

What Swift Has to Teach Us About Digitized Mind and Text Machines (I)

Employing mechanical devices for the purpose of learning seems to us like a trivial fact. We use these devices as educational means in our everyday life practically all the time. But it was not always so. There was a time when many of the notable European intellectuals regarded newly emerging world of machines with the considerable dose of suspicion. There were even intellectuals that adopted an openly hostile attitude towards mechanical devices. Appearing more visibly in the XVII century, this attitude reached its peak during the industrial revolution.

The reason behind this inimical stance was a belief that the domain of the mechanical is something opposed to the spiritual realm. Therefore, where the mechanical prevails, the spiritual has to absent itself. And yet, the spiritual had higher value for these intellectuals. Not only because the machine was of the flash, and the flash had less worth than the spirit. In a turn characteristic of the philosophy as such, the mechanical came to designate the very essence of the flesh in the modern era. This turn was initiated by René Descartes, famous french philosopher of the XVII century.

Jonathan Swift's speculative learning machine

Jonathan Swift, author of the novel Gulliver's Travels, stands historically somewhere between the Descartes' mechanization of the world picture and the socially ravaging machines of the industrial revolution. In his novel, he describes a fictional knowledge device, the so called speculative learning machine.

The word “speculative” stands for spiritual. Philosophically, it designates something divorced from the world of sensual (perception). The machine itself is depicted as a room-sized wooden frame covered with bits of wood connected by wires. All of the existing words of Laputa language are written on these wooden bits. The functioning of the machine consists in generating random sequences of text in accordance with the “proportions between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech”. Here is how Swift describes the functioning of the machine:

The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down.

Interestingly enough, the fictional device described by Swift strangely resembles the first electronic general-purpose computer, ENIAC. Take your time and read the whole relevant passage from the novel. It is worth it. Than go on and join our philosophical effort to analyze this “wonderful machine” in the third part of this essay.

Do You Feel at Home Using Your Windows / OS X?

We are all familiar with that warm cosy feel we have when we get home from work. It is not only release from the job fatigue that makes us feel so good. It is something else, something more valuable than the well deserved rest.

Être chez soi

It's not a sheer coincidence that French people say être chez soi in order to express the idea of being at home. Being at home for them literally means being at oneself (which is, of course, grammatically incorrect English). Taken literally, this expression is a spatial metaphor indicating a paradoxical situation where something contains itself. This something has returned to itself and now stays in itself. Simply put, it is back where it belongs - at its home. 

Being at oneself is not the same as being on one's own. Being on one's own means that we are left alone. It means that we miss something or more precisely, someone. It means that we are cut off from the community and our fellows.

On the contrary, being at oneself   has to do with the authentic community. You have to be an independent person in order to be able to have a true relationship. And being at oneself captures the very essence of that personal autonomy. When you are autonomous, you hold on to yourself. You stand up for yourself. It is you who determine your own actions and not something else outside you or someone else different from you. Simply put, you are in yourself.

So, do you feel at home using your Windows / OS X?

So, do you feel at home using your Windows / OS X? What a question! Since when is the operating system a home-like structure? As far as a normal user is concerned, since forever. Windows and OS X have a user folder and a desktop. And that is your home, the virtual one though. How come? Your user folder and your desktop environment is a space of a certain kind. You can navigate through that space, just like you can walk through your home. This space is delimited by other users' accounts, just like the walls of your apartment delimit your living space from neighboring flats. Ideally, others can enter in your user space only on your own accord. But a cracker (falsely identified as hacker) can also break into your account, just like a burglar can break into your house.

So, do you feel at home using your Windows / OS X? Do you have that warm cosy feel conveyed by the words "feels like home"? The apparent answer could be, yes. Because Microsoft and Apple would do everything in order for you  not be on your own. They will offer you a customer support, social networks and similar useful services. They will try to take you by the hand and guide you all the way through your virtual life. For them, it is imperative that you do not feel on your own! 

But why? The obvious answer is that they are competing hard against each other in order to win the customers.

A less obvious answer would be the following: they are trying to prevent you from being on your own because they don't want you to think for yourself. They are constantly lending you a hand because they want your permanent infancy. And infancy means lack of integrity and lack of control over one's own life. So, it is your free thinking that is at stake and not their free competition!

In the world of Microsoft and Apple, you are no more than a customer. And the customer is not a friend. Customer is, well, customer. Even when they call him a user. Even then, he must pay for the services. And when he does not have any money left, it's over.

Back to the French expression. Être chez soi. Being at oneself. To contain oneself. To be in oneself. This little phrase captures the essence of what it means to be at home. That said, "living" inside Windows / OS X gives us the exact opposite. Using this operative systems, you are out of yourself. You feel like stranger at your own home. And the home itself feels like it belongs to somebody else. Even though it was you who bought it. You simply know that you can't control the thing.

Symptom "user"

Maybe it is not a sheer coincidence that a folder where your files live is called user folder in Windows and OS X. They can't simply call it what it is - customer folder. It's too rude in our contemporary world. But they can't either call it what it is not - home folder. As Freud taught us, anytime a psyche is caught in the conflict between reality and desire, it must construct a symptom - an intermediate solution of the conflict at hand. The term user is the perfect compromise between being at home (desire) and being a customer (reality).

Try GNU/Linux

Maybe It is not a sheer coincidence that a folder where your files live is called home folder under GNU/Linux system. GNU/Linux is the free operating system developed by the community of fellow programmers. The leading idea is to be in control of the software, to empower users. We will surely talk more about GNU/Linux in future posts. In the meantime, try it. Maybe you'll finally have that cosy warm feeling that you've been longing for.

Space Openness and Closure - A Multigenre Example

Another World is a science fiction themed game happening in a strange and beautiful alien world. After a risky nuclear physics experiment, the hero, Lester Knight Chaykin, suddenly finds himself lost somewhere in this world. His obvious goal is to find his way out and get back to his home world. (Nevertheless, this obvious goal would not be the final one. To know more about the game itself read this review.) In this short article, we will draw the parallel between two sublime scenes found in this video game and a general settings of Asimov's Robot series. For those of you who don't know Asimov's Robots, it is a series of short stories and novels about robots set in the Earth's near future. The space expansion era has just begun and robots are looking more and more like humans. 

Panorama of the alien city

 

The first scene can be found here. It presents us with a look through the prison window as the breathtaking panorama of the alien city slowly appears. At this moment, the subtle dialectic (technical term for the unity of opposites) of open and closed space is about to happen. We are looking at the alien world through the eyes of the hero trapped in the alien tower. Thus, his physical viewpoint alone conveys the feel of the closed space. On the other hand, we see the infinitely looking immensity of the alien city outside. The contrast between the closed finite state and open immense space is clearly depicted.

Our hero is put right in the middle of this ontological "drama". Being caught in a prison of the alien tower, he is closed in the tower's interior. And yet, he wants to escape it trying to find his way out. This "out" signifies not only the city outside the tower, but also and primarily the great beyond, the "outer" space that lies over and above the bounds of the alien city (see the game ending).
 

Infinite descending of the urban abyss

The second scene that we're going to analyse can be seen here. Our hero is shown from the top down perspective falling down. The abyss he is falling into is not a natural one. It is embedded in the heart of the alien city. In so far as it is an urban structure, it represents closed space. Namely, city space in general results from the spatial disposition of barriers such as streets, walls, roofs etc. These barriers are closures of the natural landscape openness. And yet, this abyss seems to be going down endlessly. It is this very opposition between the urban closed space of the abyss and its infinite descending that is so intriguing in this scene.

While in the first scene the open space of the alien city contains the closed space of the alien tower, here it is exactly the other way round.  The infinity/openness of the abyss is literally embedded in the finitude and closeness of the alien cityscape. In short, the finite contains infinite.

Dialectic of openness and closure in the Asimov's Robot series

This short analysis shows us the possible ways of the the diegetic space (the imaginary space inside the game world) stratagems in the narrative aspect of the video game. Its dialectic of openness and closure is akin to the dynamic presented in the Isaac Asimov's novels The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. In the first novel, the closure of the urban space is emphasised by the steel cupola build above the city. The city is literally isolated from the outside world by its vaulted ceiling. Its light and whether conditions are generated artificially. Thus, the connection between artificial and closed is hinted by the novel (we will not explore it in this article). While the steel barrier is protecting the city from the open nature, the naked sun signifies the open space unprotected by the urban structures.

The nakedness of the sun can hurt your eyes. At the same time, it is very tempting to look directly in the sun without wearing the eye protection. To put it simply, we are simultaneously  frightened and attracted by the open space. We feel safe and protected in our pocket universe. But then again, we are always tempted to leave it, fascinated with the infinite reaches of the open space.