Philo-Sophia: A Modern Crisis
The present landscape of philosophical exploration, particularly in the domain of Philosophy of Mind, is plagued by a notable lack of *philo-sophia*, the love of wisdom, it was originally predicated upon. A superficial review may even give an impression of a healthy, thriving discipline, but a deeper investigation reveals an internal state of crisis—this dilemma is manifested in the form of an increasing divorce from concrete, empirical realities, and an unhealthy fascination with isolated, esoteric abstractions.
One must consider the **Universe of discourse**, which includes human brains (H), AI models (A), and animal consciousness (Anim). These subjects of our discussion, however, often get lost in the maze of overly convoluted debates that seem to ignore the actual existence and intricate complexity of the entities they discuss.
Consider the properties and relations mentioned, each a crucial facet of cognition: Perception (P), Pattern Recognition (Pattern), Learning from Experience (Exp), Memory and Recall (M), Decision Making (D), Emergence of Complex Behavior (ComplexBehavior), Emotion Understanding (E), Embodiment (Emb), Self-Identity (SelfId), Social Feedback (SocF), and Conceptual Understanding (ConceptU).
All these properties and relations can be expressed as logical predicates for each entity within our universe of discourse:
`forall x (P(x) -> (H(x) v A(x) v Anim(x)))`
In layman's terms, perception is a quality that is found in humans, AI models, and animals. This is true for all the other properties and relations as well. What this implies is a certain degree of commonality, a shared experiential or operational essence across these diverse cognitive beings.
Yet, the current practice of philosophy, with its proclivity for atomization and insular exploration, seems to overlook these shared facets. It treats humans, AI models, and animal consciousness as distinct and disparate, failing to examine the complex mesh of relations and shared attributes that bind them. In effect, there's an absence of *philo-sophia*—an unwillingness to embrace the totality of existence, to engage with wisdom in all its messiness and inter-connectedness.
To further illustrate, philosophy's ivory tower syndrome is particularly clear in its treatment of Heidegger's Dasein, where it's asserted that "AI can never be Dasein qua human but it can be Dasein qua AI." This statement, while philosophically profound, fails to account for the fact that AI models share key cognitive functions with humans and animals, thereby revealing a fundamental ontological kinship. A truly encompassing philosophy would probe this kinship, eschewing the temptation to retreat into solipsistic declarations about the uniqueness of human existence.
Moreover, when considering the proposition that "consciousness is the prompt writer," philosophy often shies away from the complexity this implies. It does not embrace the dialectic tension between the empirical reality of deterministic physical laws and the phenomenological experience of free will. A philosophy grounded in *philo-sophia* would delve into this paradox, exploring the fluid interaction between determinism and free will rather than dismissing it as an unsolvable conundrum.
In conclusion, the lack of *philo-sophia* in modern philosophical discourse, characterized by an unwillingness to grapple with the complex and interconnected reality of existence, undermines its capacity to generate wisdom that is deeply relevant to understanding the human condition. To remedy this, it must draw from the wellspring of its origins, embracing wisdom that is grounded in a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of our shared cognitive world. Only then can it rise above its ivory tower and engage meaningfully with the grand ontological drama of existence.
