Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology: Technology as Part of Nature (2024)

In this second to last piece of the Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology series, I frame the final interview to be published in June in the context of my exploration of the evolving relationship among science, philosophy, and faith.

The final interview, in which Brian Leiter will explore Nietzsche’s fatalism, was prompted by Sean Kelly’s two-part essay published in this series, The Genealogy of Redemption in the Western Tradition. Sean’s piece highlighted that science and technology are reshaping philosophical debate and that a technological form of being represents an existential risk. His case for a new way of thinking about authenticity in the modern age led me to reach out to Brian who has written extensively on Nietzsche. Before touching on his Essentialism, and delving further in next month, let me situate the line of inquiry in the thread of this series. Specifically, how I conclude that we should construe technology as a part of nature.

I began with an exploration of Michael Della Rocca’s latest book, The Parmenidean Ascent, which challenges the foundation of philosophy with a deeply skeptical view of nature without individuation. An uncompromising commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason leads to an undifferentiated vision of a world, without distinctions or multiplicity. A thesis throughout my series is that the latest advances in modern physics and technology reflect this strict Rationalism.

Specifically, I first made the case that quantum AI echoes Spinoza, suggesting that the introduction of quantum materials transform computing in a way that reflects Spinoza’s discredited notion of Parallelism. I suggest that the way it revolutionizes certain calculations represents a kind of Parallelism in practice. The doctrine posits no interaction or causal relationship between the mind and the body. Neither the mental nor the physical are reducible to the other, as they are two attributes of the same divine substance. I similarly suggest that there is no direct relationship between the introduction of superposition through quantum materials (proxy for body) and the radically enhanced computational results of quantum AI (proxy for mind). What takes conventional computers hundreds of years can be accomplished virtually immediately, with the introduction of quantum uncertainty. The radical transformation of AI, with no correlation between superposition and nearly instantaneous solutions, invigorates Spinoza and highlights how technology deserves further philosophical attention.

In this vein, I then discussed how the theory of non-locality similarly reflects an absolute form of Monism. Modern physics now suggests that spacetime not only warps, but we are losing the ability to ascribe locations, with no definitive view about what is where. The notion of space itself is becoming incoherent. As relational notions lose their meaning, the upshot is there is actually no such thing as place or distance.

With physicists sounding like Spinoza, I then discussed how the modern simulation argument takes on a different character. Believing the world is an elaborate computer program, and consciousness can be simulated, reflects the same philosophical archetype. The upshot is that people who are open to the simulation argument should entertain a strict Rationalism, and these new interpretations of nature blur distinctions across science, philosophy, and faith.

Sean’s essay is accordingly paradigmatic because it highlights the inescapable implications of the advance of science and technology. Tracing salvation in the Western tradition, he suggests that we can’t be freed, acquired, or mastered to be truly authentic. What constitutes The Proper Dignity of Human Being, the title of his forthcoming book, is a complementarity with the world. “A world whose significance simultaneously governs our action and is grounded in it.”

Sean suggests that the notion of mastery is especially dangerous, as he explores technology’s connections to banal forms of evil in Arendt’s example of its absolute form in the concentration camps—where control of the self leads to existential danger. He contends that we need a new interpretation of authenticity for our moment in history, with the aim to understand the dignity of our existence.

Sean’s insight that our authentic dignity does not lie in our unfettered autonomy or mastery, leads me to the final interview with Brian Leiter. Particularly, to explore what it means to be rooted in our world. How, contrary to the Enlightenment notion that our human essence in entirely based on spontaneity, our freedom is not the basis for redemption. To the extent Sean used Nietzsche as an exemplar of mastery, I wanted to explore how his unique form of determinism could bolster the case for reconsidering human freedom.

In fact, it would be fairer to characterize Nietzsche’s view as a kind of fatalism. To understand his unique naturalism, next month I will explore the holistic case in Brian’s Nietzsche on Morality, with the core takeaway being that Nietzsche’s determinism is best understood as an Essentialism. Brian uses the powerful example of a plant. We can cultivate and nurture it, but, ultimately, it will bear its unique fruit. In this sense, Nietzsche is aligned with Sean’s case, where autonomy is not the foundation of our authenticity—and indeed we should embrace our fatality (Eternal Recurrence, etc.). At the same time, our ennoblement is a kind of cultivation. For Nietzsche, this is a higher form of man—but the essential point, in the context of Sean’s essay, is that our authentic dignity is not a form of self-actualization, but how we are embedded in the world and influence our destiny.

Finally, to frame this insight as I complete this series on the import of technology, I would like to revisit my qualms about the simulation argument and contention that technology should be understood as part of nature. I suggested that its proponents are correct in appreciating the importance of technology’s ascendance—as I believe that quantum AI invigorates Spinoza. However, they are absolutely wrong in equating virtual reality with the world, effectively extracting existence into a kind of absolute objectivity. Rather, I contend that, through a Spinozist lens, technology (including virtual reality) should be viewed as sui generis and part of nature. By way of analogy, it should be construed as an attribute or dimension of nature, similar to thought and extension. As such, it is necessary—in the broad sense of Spinoza’s Necessitarianism—but viewed in a more nuanced manner, reflected in Nietzsche’s Essentialism.

Technology is necessary as part of nature, but we have “free will” and its trajectory is not fixed. We are cultivating and nurturing the plant, so to speak, shaping its form and purpose. Technology is therefore more than a mirror reflecting science and philosophy. We should consider it as part of our essence—bound to produce and sculpt it.As I discussed in my polemic for the Common Good, we are losing control of the algorithms and our cultural and economic landscape is suffering from ubiquitous technological forces. As it changes our nature and world, we must orient and constrain technology to manage its existential risks.