Hubert Dreyfus is an American philosopher, best
known for his penetrating critique of the pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Proponents of so-called strong AI believe that the human brain is simply a
complex computer, and that therefore we can reasonably hope to build computers
that are as or more intelligent than limited human brains. Dreyfus used the
insights of phenomenology to criticize this program. Briefly, he argued that
strong AI overlooks the crucial role the fact of our embodiment plays in
providing an essential background and stage for intelligence. We are not
intelligent just because we have well-developed desktop computers; in addition,
we owe our ability to think, and to cope with the world, to the fact that we
have bodies with which to grapple with it.

In this book, Dreyfus applies this same set of
considerations to thinking about the role and potential of the Internet. He
tackles four topics: the extent to which the Internet is a useful tool for
locating information, to which it could replace more traditional learning
environments, to which it might allow us to be (virtually) present at distance
events, and finally the degree to which it can contribute to our having
meaningful lives, both individually and collectively. Dreyfus is no Luddite –
he admits to using the Internet in his own teaching – but his message is that
it is not simply inferior to traditional methods of performing the tasks we ask
of it, it is positively dangerous.

The first and weakest of the chapters is concerned
with the Internet as a means of gathering information. Here Dreyfus simply
applies the lessons of his work on artificial intelligence, arguing that search
engines cannot now locate information usefully, and that there is no prospect
of much improvement in this regard. Since search engines lack common sense,
they cannot distinguish between relevant and irrelevant occurrences of the
search terms, nor can they rank documents usefully. Thus, Dreyfus believes that
we shall be unable to locate more than a small percentage of the information we
seek. This contention strikes me as unlikely. It is simply up to the user to
supply the missing common sense. We can identify in advance the kinds of terms
likely to appear in the documents in which we are interested, and utilize
search engines that scan the full text of Web pages. This does imply that our
ability to locate useful information is proportional to the knowledge we
already possess of the subject in question, but that seems to be the case with
all methods of searching, both on and off-line.

The second chapter is concerned with distance
education. Here Dreyfus presents a fascinating analysis of the stages of
learning, from beginner to mastery. He argues that the Internet is as good a
medium for education in its early stages as any, but that progress beyond a
very basic competency requires the presence of the learner to the teacher.
Grasping the non-formalizable skills of the craft requires that the learner
come to share the distinctive manner of perceiving the salient aspects of the
world of the expert, and this can only be accomplished if he or she can share
the entire visual field of the teacher, as well as respond to cues which are
too subtle to be captured by the technology available to us today. Since
mastery requires presence, the
Internet will be limited by the degree to which it can provide an adequate
virtual presence. This is the topic of Dreyfus’s third chapter, which in many
ways amplifies the themes of the second. Once again, the central claim is that
presence requires the body, to organize perception and establish perspective.
Without our bodies as organizing principles, we cannot ever get to grips
properly with the world.

Dreyfus’s first three chapters are applications of
the lessons of phenomenology to the Internet. Interesting though they are,
their claims are limited: the Internet cannot ever replace real presence, face-to-face
learning and interaction. Dreyfus’s fourth chapter is more ambitious and
controversial. The claim here is that the Internet is the latest and most
damaging incarnation of the public sphere understood as Kierkegaard understood
it: not merely as a place for enlightened debate, but as the source of modern
nihilism. According to Kierkegaard, the instruments of the public sphere – for
him, paradigmatically the newspaper – undermine genuine commitment to a
meaningful existence by parading contextless facts and reports before a public
encouraged to be curious about everything. But general curiosity implies
commitment to nothing in particular. Everything is placed on the same level of
importance or triviality, from wars to local scandals, from scientific
breakthroughs to gossip; thereby, all sources of genuine meaning are
undermined. For Dreyfus, the Internet is the intensification of that process,
and the curiosity of Kierkegaard’s newspaper reader is a forerunner of the
restlessness of the Web surfer. Since the Web is organized in an ad hoc and
lateral manner, as opposed to hierarchically, it discourages vital distinctions
between the important and the trivial.

Those who are familiar with the work of Martin
Heidegger will recognize in Dreyfus’s arguments an echo of the German’s
imprecations against ‘Das Mann’, the modern bourgeois man who lacks any true
grounding in place. And Dreyfus’s arguments here share with Heidegger’s work a
profoundly anti-democratic tenor. Whatever the risks of allowing everyone to
express an opinion concerning any subject, the risks of prohibiting such expression
are almost certainly greater. While Dreyfus identifies a genuine malaise in the
political culture of Western democracies – a genuine failure to take
responsibility, a lack of commitment and a rising cynicism concerning politics
– it is unlikely that merely allowing the free flow of information is the
source of these problems. Though the Internet does not provide a solution to
these problems, as some of its more enthusiastic advocates would have us
believe, nor does it cause them. Instead, these problems arise in the real
world, and it is here that their solution must be found.

©
2002 Neil Levy

Dr Neil Levy is a fellow of the Centre for Applied Philosophy
and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University,
Australia. He is the author of two mongraphs and over a dozen articles and book
chapters on Continental philosophy, ethics and political philosophy. He is
currently writing a book on moral relativism.

Categories: Philosophical