Joshua D.F. Hooke

Heidegger's scattered elaboration of formal indication is condemned to a certain degree of reconstruction. Thus, my primary goal in this paper is to provide a principled account of formal indication by retracing the initial stakes and structural moments. I will outline the seemingly disjointed methodological fragments to render a unified account. My complementary goal is to provide a defensible account of its scattered elaboration in the Frühe Freiburger Vorlesungen, 1919–1923. Disagreement regarding the meaning and validity of Heidegger's formal indication is sustained by its resistance to assimilate into his phenomenological project, which encompasses the canonical arguments of Being and Time. As a result, the current interpretations of formal indication as applied hermeneutics or theoretical reflection are unsatisfactory; they render the central supports uniformly deficient for different reasons. I argue that a principled and unified interpretation is attainable, in part, because Heidegger's enigmatic uses show an overlooked link among them. In my view, Heidegger's formal indication characterizes the method that conditions the pre-theoretical grasp of ontic beings and the reflexive possibility for Dasein to actualize a principled account of existential Being (Sein). This result supports Heidegger's phenomenological breakthrough towards a sense of Being (Sein) as the ground of intelligibility.

My primary goal in this paper is to provide a historical reconstruction of Heidegger’s relationship with Hermann Lotze’s logic of validity. Lotze’s characterization of truth's ‘actuality’ solidifies the fallacious presupposition that the essence of truth is to be understood primarily in terms of logical assertions. Heidegger marks this decisive position in §44 of Being and Time and gains its methodological purchase through the deconstruction of traditional logic. However, Heidegger’s treatment is abbreviated, and his sources remain notoriously concealed. For this reason, much is to be gained by examining the supplement provided one year earlier in a lecture course titled Logic: The Question of Truth. In this course, Heidegger critically evaluates a core principle of both phenomenology and neo-Kantian Erkenntnistheorie: the concept of validity (Geltung). This term originates from Lotze’s Platonic Ideenlehre, which asserts that Platonic "ideas" correspond to thoughts by means of a logical necessity. Throughout this paper, I demonstrate the historical significance and influence of Lotze’s Logic on 20th-century Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology. By returning to Lotze’s text, I also provide an in-depth review of Heidegger’s reading of Lotze, whom he charges with misleading 20th-century epistemology.

The papers in the following volume are the outcome of a three-year long interdisciplinary research project. The project began with an in-person meeting hosted and funded by the Daimler und Benz Stiftung in Germany in March 2020 (the world was shutting down one nation at a time as we met). During the pandemic we continued to meet monthly online with support from Memorial University of Newfoundland. From the beginning it was the goal of the Working Group on Intelligence (WGI), as we called ourselves, to broaden and deepen the AI debate with a more nuanced understanding of intelligence than is common in cognitive and computer science discussions of AI. We wished to draw on the history of philosophy, ecology, and the philosophy of mind to establish that intelligence is meant in many senses, to use an Aristotelian expression. The clarification of these various meanings is essential to the discussion around the ethics of AI, especially the question concerning the possibility of strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence.

A curious feature in Immanuel Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime is the choice of examples, namely, the Pyramids of Egypt and St. Peter’s Basilica. In the paragraph following these examples, Kant suggests that the sublime does not exhibit itself in works of art. This ambiguity has led scholars to question the possibility of “artistic sublimity.” The scholarship has prompted discussions about whether works of art that evoke the sublime feeling are genuine sublime experiences. A representational account of artistic sublimity restricts the sublime to experiences in raw nature. Art can depict the sublime stylistically; however, it cannot evoke the feeling of sublimity. On an opposing interpretation, the sublime occurs because of a conflict between imagination and reason; any work of art that provokes this conflict is sublime. As a result, the power of the sublime overrides and annihilates determinate ends, allowing pure aesthetic judgments. The alleged contradiction in Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime is also read as an interpretive issue regarding purity, prompting the pure-impure distinction. Art that has the power to evoke the feeling of sublimity is deemed “impurely sublime” because of the admixture of interest. Alternatively, if aesthetic judgments of the sublime are satisfied irrespective of the object, then art is purely sublime without needing a further determination. Following Henry Allison, I defend the view that we should preserve a pure–impure distinction. A concept of impure sublimity allows us to account for an emotionally motiving satisfaction akin to the sublime in the presence of some works of art while maintaining a close reading of the Kantian account of pure sublimity as an exclusive consequence of raw nature.

My primary goal in this paper is to demonstrate the inadequacy of Hubert Dreyfus’ use of understanding (Verstehen) for Artificial Intelligence (AI). My complementary goal is to provide a principled account of Martin Heidegger’s concept of understanding (Verstehen). Dreyfus and other verificationists argue that understanding (Verstehen) is socially purposive action and skillful embodied coping. Understanding (Verstehen), conceived of in this way, purportedly challenges cognitive models of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that rely on formal rules, ‘rational’ decisionmaking, and the explicit representation of knowledge. This account is unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, it maintains an extrinsic, goal-oriented intentionality that is susceptible to the success of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Second, it ignores the systematic and constitutive analysis of self-understanding (Seinsverständnis) that is fundamental to Heidegger’s ontology. Recent exegetical work replicates these inadequacies and fails to improve discussions on Heidegger’s relationship to Artificial Intelligence (AI). To resolve this oversight, I bridge the gap between Heidegger’s concept of understanding and disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) (SZ §44 / 256-278). I argue that understanding characterizes the pre-theoretical grasp of entities and the pre-ontological structure that initiates the question of self-understanding (Seinsverständnis).