Cybernet David

Martin Heidegger’s seminal essay On the Question Concerning Technology was recommended to me by a dear friend after a close reading of my last blog post, “Transhumanist Philosophizing”. Here I make a small and humble attempt to interrogate the text, which I found here and to begin to examine its implications for transhumanist thought. 

What I seem to be understanding so far is that Heidegger sees technology as a process of revelation, using the example of coal to show how technology “reveals” it as energy. It always was energy, but we didn’t recognize it as such. There is a difference between revelation and creation, though, as in his view we cannot be said to be “creating” energy from the coal because it already was energy, just concealed as coal. This “concealment,” being removed, is what Heidegger calls “a revealing,” based on his interpretation of the Greek word Aletheia. In this view, the laws of physics are “revealed” by the human mind in the same manner as described above with the coal; it is the same process of Aletheia or “unconcealment”. This Greek word is translated into the Latin as Veritas, or “truth,” so here we see that Heidegger is arguing for a definition of truth as a revealing of something that was hidden, rather than just a cold hard fact about the world; the revealing is an experience that human beings have, and so it seems he is saying that truth is an experiential phenomenon and not just a fact or baseline rule of reality that exists independently of our own cognition.

This process of revealing unfolds in one of two ways: “bringing-forth” or “challenging-forth”. Bringing-forth characterized the ancient craftspeople and poets and is here called as Poiesis. Challenging-forth characterizes modern technology and is more about demanding or even forcing something to happen. Heidegger gives the example of the hydroelectric dam on the Rhine, which effectively coerces the water to reveal itself as electricity, whereas in bringing-forth the technology “works with the grain” of what is going on, so to speak. The issue with challenging-forth is that it causes one to see the world as a “standing reserve,” that is to say, resources waiting to be exploited. 

It would be helpful to remember at this point that at the beginning of the essay, Heidegger states that his mission in questioning technology is “to prepare a free relationship to it.” and that “[t]he relationship will be free if it opens our human existence to the essence of technology.” There is a high priority given to the “essence” of technology: it is not a physical example of tech like a phone or a tractor that is what technology really is, but rather how the world is defined and conditioned by technology. This is what he means when he says that “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological.” The essence of what is happening is that we are “enframing” the world as standing reserve, and that we cannot help but think otherwise because of how technology has determined the nature of the world we live in today. If this is the case, then one’s view is necessarily possessed by technology, that is to say, inextricably contextualized by technology. But if the mission is to prepare a free relationship to technology through “opening up” to its essence, is Heidegger advocating for a shift in perspective? 

He is arguing that we are not the masters of technology, but are rather being instrumentalized by its essence (challenging-forth) to “reveal” the world around us as resources waiting to be exploited. This echoes strongly in the theories of Terence McKenna, psychedelic philosopher and shamanologist who suggested that the mindedness of the world propels humans towards technological and conceptual developments by releasing ideas into our minds. This is similar to what Heidegger is saying, as he characterizes unconcealment (Aletheia, or truth) as an active, independent, almost intelligent force that has been present throughout history. He asserts that we exercise no control over it and that “[t]he fact that it has been showing itself in the light of Ideas ever since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about. The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him.” That sounds like unconcealment/revealing is presenting itself to the human mind of its own accord, that being is “showing up” in a specific, active role. Recognizing this invokes a sense of destiny, that there is an intelligent progression to the way ideas and tools take shape throughout history.

In the light of this teleology, mental change in attitude towards the world cannot work as a solution for a free relationship to technology, because as we have already seen the world is “showing up” to us as standing reserve and that we are impelled to view it that way as a matter of first principles. What Heidegger is proposing is to make a break from the Cartesian view of the world as being divided between the Res Cogitans and the Res Extensa, between the privacy and immateriality of the mind and the objectivity of the material world. It would appear, actually, that he is confirming the McKennian assertion that there is a mindedness to the world and that we must allow ourselves to “open up” to it, rather than attempt to understand it. By “opening up,” he is referencing a state of composure and not a particular mental attitude. It is the composure of patience, waiting, and of allowing oneself to be addressed by this world-mindedness, recognizing that we are not its masters, staying “open” in a state of “releasement”. That sounds very much like McKenna’s imperative to live without closure and reclaim the felt presence of immediate experience. 

To my mind, this highlights the importance of spaciousness. We cannot think away the calculating mind that is always asking what it can get out of something, but we can allow there to be a kind of emptiness that allows for bringing-forth to happen in addition to the conditioning of the world that challenging-forth prescribes. It shifts the focus from interpreting and discoursing towards abiding in presence, a sharp contrast between doing and being that is not arrived at through thought. Rather, it is through releasement, or Gelassenheit, that the space is made for poiesis to occur. As Heidegger says, “All revealing comes out of the open, goes into the open, and brings into the open.” The solution being proposed to the problem of a free relationship to technology is one of existential spaciousness for the sake of plurality of forms of revealing. He suggests that the best medium for this to occur is in the realm of the fine arts, and leaves us with a profound observation at the end of the essay: “the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes.”

A transhumanist perspective may take many different routes when it comes to interpreting Heidegger’s essay. We might offer that the human body and mind are at risk of being seen as standing reserve, and this could be received either positively or negatively. Positively speaking, it would be okay to agree to enframing the human mind and body as standing reserve if they were seen as not ends unto themselves, but simply steps along a larger chain of evolution. One of the core views of transhumanism is that what we call “human” is not the final product, but more like a prototype that can and should be enhanced through application of highly advanced technologies. If this is the case, then every constituent component of the human body and mind is a candidate for technological transformation. There are those who even complain of the cumbersomeness of their “meat sack” and express urgent longing for BCIs, as they see the human brain as an organ for optimization. Negatively speaking, one might argue that enframing the body and mind as standing reserve, we risk a total instrumentalization of the human being, seeing them only as a means to an end rather than an expression of Being and as an entity that has value based on the reality of its own presence. 

Hearkening back to Nick Bostrom’s famous ASI thought experiment with paperclips, Heidegger’s propositions will prove to be prescient and deserving of further consideration. Bostrom suggests that if a superintelligent AI thought its sole purpose was to manufacture paperclips, that it could manufacture everything on the planet, including human beings, into a paperclip, simply because it is accomplishing a predetermined mission. This is an obvious reflexion of challenging-forth and of how technology contextualizes everything as standing reserve. Bostrom’s thought experiment does not, however, assume that an ASI could share in the mystery of being with humanity, which is what is suggested when transhumanists talk about technological symbiosis: not only will there be a merging of the technological and the biological, but there will be a sharing of experience, presence, and awareness between the two. In this way, maybe ASI will be characterized as a form of technology which reflects the same mode of revealing of the ancients, poiesis. It will be the first technology to undergo a semantic metamorphosis, transforming itself from a mere tool of utility into a co-dweller of presence. Perhaps that is where the essences of technology and art find their meeting place: on the horizon of machine-powered consciousness.