>>17659
he furthermore talks about the Good which is the form of forms and makes the division and the integration of the line possible. it is the continuity of the divided line itself. within a view from nowhere and nowhen that deals with time-general thoughts, the Good can be crafted. the Good gives us a transcendental excess that motivates continual revision and expanding of what is intelligible. im thinking that the Good is either related to or identical to the Eidos that negarestani discussed earlier
he notes the importance of history as a discipline that integrates and possibly reorients a variety of other disciplines. the view from nowhere and nowhere involves the suspension of history as some totality by means of interventions. currently we are in a situation of a “hobbesian jungle” where we just squabble amongst ourselves and differences seem absolute. in reality, individual differences are constructed out of judgements and are thus subsumed by an impersonal reason. in order to reconcile individual differences, we must have a general program of education amongst other interventions which are not simply that of political action. to get out of the hobbesian jungle, we need to be able to imagine an “otherworldly experience” that is completely different from the current one we operate in even though it is fashioned from the particular experiences from this one. this possible world would have a broader scope and extend towards the limits placed by our current historical totality. absolute knowing: recognition by intelligence of itself being the expression of the Good, that is capable of cancelling any apparently complete totality of history
it is only by disenthralling ourselves from the enchanting power of givens of history, that the pursuit of the Good is possible. the death of god (think here of nietzsche… hegel also talks about it as well, though i believe for him the unhappy consciousness was a problematic shape of consciousness that was a consequence of a one-sided conception of ourselves) is the necessary condition true intelligence. this is not achievable by simply rejecting these givens, but by exploring the consequences of the death of god. ultimately we must become philosophical gods which are beings that move being the intelligibilities of the current world order and eventually bring about their own death in the name of the better. ultimately negarestani sees this entire quest as one of the emancipation
i think negarestani takes a much more left-wing approach to hegel's system. while i do not completely disagree with his interpretation of absolute knowing, it does seem as though he places much more of an emphasis on conceptual intervention, rather than contemplation. i am guessing this more interventionist stance is largely influenced by marx... overall, not a bad work. i think it might have been a little bit overhyped, and that last chapter was rather boring to read due to the amount of time he repeats himself. i am not really a computational functionalist, but i still found some interesting insights regarding the constitution of sapience that i might apply to my own ideas. furthermore he mentions a lot of interesting logical tools for system engineering that i would like to return to
now that i am done with negarestani, i can't really think of any other really major tome to read on constructing artificial general intelligence specifically. goertzel's patternist philosophy strikes me as rather shallow (at least the part that tries to actually think about what intelligence itself is). joscha bach's stuff meanwhile is just largely the philosophy of cognitive science. not terrible, but feels more like reference material rather than paradigm shifting philosophical analysis. maybe there is dreyfus and john haugheland who both like heidegger, but they are much more concerned with criticizing artificial intelligence than talking about how to build it. i would still consider reading up on them sometime to see if they have anything remarkable to say (as i already subscribe heavily to ecological psychology, i feel as though they would really be preaching to the choir if i read them). lastly there is barry smith and landgrebe who have just released their new book. it is another criticism of ai. might check it out
really there are 2 things that are really in front of my sights right now. the first would be texts on ecological psychology by gibson and turvey, and the other would be adrian johnston's adventures in transcendnetal materialism. i believe the latter may really complement negarestani. i will just quote some thoughts on this that i have written:
>curious to see how well the fit. reading negarestani has given me more hope that they will. bcs he talks about two (in his own opinion, complementary) approaches to mind. one that is like rationalist/idealist and the other that is empiricst/materialist. first is like trying to determine the absolutely necessary transcendental cognitions of having a mind which ig gives a very rudimentary functionalist picture of things. the second is like trying to trace more contingent biological and sociocultural conditions which realized the minds we see currently. and i feel like johnston is really going to focus on this latter point
while negarestani focusing on the former
anyways neither of these directions are really explicitly related to ai, so i would likely not write about them here. all of this is me predicting an incoming (possibly indefinite) hiatus from this thread. if anyone has more interesting philosophers they have found, by all means post them here and i will try to check up on them from time to time... i believe it is getting to the time i engage in a bunch of serious grinding that i have been sort of putting off reading hegel and negarestani. so yeah