Nathan Key

Husband, Father, Thinker.

 

 
 

Earlier this week, I posted a blog about Universal Rights. I wanted to continue this idea today, especially since we're heading into the Independence Day celebrations here in the United States. It's always relevant to talk about rights, but it's especially relevant around holidays where we specifically celebrate them!

* * *
So what are rights anyway?

When the founding fathers of the United States were drafting our Declaration of Independence, they had been grappling with this question quite a bit. It was even more important to them because they had been living under the boot of oppression. They were colonists who were being taken advantage of in order for the "homeland" to finance wars, debt, and extravagances. Feeling the burden of injustice, they didn't merely fight back- they thought through their situation and came to a rational conclusion about why they felt slighted.

Most of them didn't want to be a free and independent State.
They merely wanted to be treated fairly and equally.

From their writings and the writings of contemporary philosophers such as Locke, Hobbes, and others, we've now got a rather nice framework from which we can address Universal Human Rights. I'm going to write about them a little differently than these men did, but this blog is entirely based on the principles they laid out- just so you know where I'm getting my ideas.

In order to fully understand Human Rights, it's important to distinguish between three sets. We'll call the first Goods & Services. These are things that people are able to produce or enact. The second category is Legislated Rights. These are entitlements that a particular government or community has given to its citizens. The final category is Universal Rights. These are rights and freedoms that are common to all humans on the basis of their existence rather than their citizenship, beliefs, or purchasing power.

Universal Rights. In order for something to qualify as a legitimate Universal Right, it must fit within the following two criteria:

1. It must be accessible/inherent to all people, in at all times, in all places in the world.

In regard to number one, we must qualify Universal as ALL people. In the future, as technology changes, humanity might come across something that's good and beneficial for the folks living in that time period. But since those of us living today, and everyone who's lived before us were unable to benefit from that advancement, it cannot be a Universal Right. It doesn't meet the qualification of ALL people. So language, computers, cell phones, and the like cannot be rights because they are not common to all people in all time periods.

The same can be true of anything that is contingent upon living in a certain area of the world. We cannot say that anyone has the right to swim. Swimming is something that one can do only if they have access to water. In some areas of the world, there isn't any water readily available for swimming, and so this could not be classified as a Universal Right.

2. It must not be reliant upon another human being's existence, property, or will.

This criteria is a little more tricky, but it's true nonetheless. Basically, it says that we cannot claim as a Universal Right anything that is reliant upon someone else. For example, I cannot claim a Universal Right to Mutual Love. Mutual Love requires that another person exists and that they have the ability and desire to love us back.

In the same way, I can't ever say that I have a Universal Right to someone else's work or their food. This is because a Universal Right wouldn't just mean that I have a right to it, but that all people, in all places, and in all times have a right to this person's work or food. Even if that person agrees that everyone at all times can partake, we cannot say that this is a true Universal Right because it's still contingent upon that person's will- not to mention the fact that food and work are limited resources and therefore CANNOT ever be given to all people.

So, what are some Universal Rights?

Our founding father's decided that Life, Liberty, and Property were some.

Life- each man and woman is entitled to their life. No one should be allowed to take it from them needlessly.

Liberty- each man and woman is entitled to make their own decisions. Although we agree to give up some of our personal liberty in order to respect the "lifes and property" of others, all men are free (yes, was completely hypocritical for the men who owned slaves to write such a thing, but I believe it's true of all time, even if some people throughout history were denied this right)

Property- each man and woman is entitled to the work of their hands. If they make it, grow it, or construct it, they can claim it as their own and should not be required to surrender it against their will.

Legislated Rights. These are rights that are given to us because we live under a certain time period or a certain government or community. Voting is a good example of a legislated right. It cannot be Universal because it requires a Democracy or some other representative form of government, and let's face it, not all people live under a Democracy. Some other examples could include a Trial by Jury, Miranda Rights (the right to remain silent), and Marriage. Legislated Rights can also entail the rights that a person might have to another person's Universal Rights based on fulfillment or violation of contracts- for instance, I might be entitled to another person's property if they have agreed to give it to me for a sum of money or service and I provide that money or service. It could also be said that if an individual violates the Universal Rights of an individual- takes their life, liberty, or property without their consent, the individual who violates those rights may have abandoned their own and be required to give up their life, liberty, or property as a result.

Goods & Services. The are things that are created, designed, grown, or provided by other humans for the benefit of others. These include food, clothing, homes, land, manicures, cell phones, medical care, education, and anything else that is given to us or provided by us.

This is where I'm probably going to get a lot of arguments, but I'm going to say VERY STRONGLY that we cannot EVER claim as a Universal Right anything that requires another person to provide it. Goods and Services cannot EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER be Universal Rights.

Simply stated, if I cannot have a Universal Right to food because that would mean that the farmer who produces it has no property rights or liberty rights. If I have a right to it, I can take it without his consent. In fact, I could force him to grow it for me if it were truly a Universal Right.

Same thing for Education.

I cannot say that all humans are entitled to education because such a claim would first require that there be teachers and professors. Then, it would also mean that my claim to their services trumps any rights they have as to what their services are worth or who they'd like to give their services to.

Same thing for Healthcare.

I cannot say that all humans are entitled to medical care because such a claim would first require that there be doctors, nurses and medicine. But secondly, it would also mean that my right to their services trumps their right to give their services and their right to choose who to give their services to.

The conundrum: Both education (and soon Healthcare if we're not careful) are actually Legislated Rights in a lot of countries (including here in the US). This means that the government has taken the Universal Rights of Liberty and Property away from the individuals in the Education and Heathcare industries and given it to the rest of the citizens.

It may not seem like such a big deal- after all- it seems to benefit everyone, right?

But the problem is this- if you forcibly take away rights from some individuals, you take it away from ALL individuals. This means that claiming a right to Healthcare and Education actually dehumanizes all of us in the process. We all suffer the loss of our Universal Rights when we choose to take them forcibly from someone else.

This isn't to say that Education and Healthcare are unimportant. They are vital. They are almost as vital as food- which is another thing we're not "entitled to." So we need to look for ways to make sure that all people have access to Education, Healthcare, and food.

But the answer isn't redefining these things as Universal Rights or Legislating them. Because when we do, we all lose. The quality of life, liberty, property (and therefore education and Healthcare) all decrease when we try to manipulate the system into something that it's not.
 
 

This week, I decided to do a quick interview with our good friend Christopher Cocca. He wrote a guest blog here a few months back and he's beginning a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The New School. This week we talked about school, postmodernism, and technology. He's posting his side of the interview with me over on his blog sometime this week, too.

Be sure to check it out!

* * *
Nathan Key: Thanks for agree to let me interview you, Chris. Now, from what I’ve read on your blog, you've recently decided to head back to school for an MFA? Can you tell us more about that and what prompted you back into education?

Christopher Cocca: There's no shortage of opinions on the utility of the MFA on the web and in general. For me, it's about being around other people who are trying to do the same thing I'm trying to do: push myself to producing the best possible texts. Doing this with other writers (students and teachers) appeals to me. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't major in creative writing or English instead of political philosophy as an undergrad. And I'd still get the MDiv. I'd do it all the same as I did, including eventually going back and exploring/improving this part of what I do in a more formal, educational setting. I'm glad to be going back now, in my extremely late 20s, with a very clear focus.

NK: You know, sometimes I wish I could head back to high school and college with that clear focus you just mentioned- knowing then what I do now. Ah well… On your blog you've mentioned Postmodernism quite a bit, lately. One meme I've been exploring here on this site is the postmodern idea of "death of the author" and how media, art, and literature have been affected. As a guy who's writing a novel and working toward publishing your own ideas and stories, how is your role as a writer and storyteller changing?

CC: The death of the author is another way of saying everyone's an author. In the postmodern literary sense where reader-response sometimes is taken to trump everything, I get what some people mean, but on the other hand, with all of us social networking, tweeting, meme-ing, song-quoting, whatever...everyone is some kind of passer-on of content. Some people are creating, authoring. Some people are receiving and retransmitting. Many, actually. RT hashtag cliche. The interesting thing to me is that our references are so ubiquitous but people still think that repeating them makes them clever or interesting, that somehow repeating this line or lyric or saying this punch-line or snarky thing --- the punch-line everyone's expecting because you've heard it a million times --- makes us authors. I'm talking about general conversation here, not just the passive-aggressive what I had for lunch today Facebook status updates. And then you've got what's going on in Iran, which should really make all of us feel pretty shameful about most of the things we use social media and social networking for. Nothing in the world to say and all the freedom to say it.

Here I'm going to do it myself: we're like the Junkions from the original Transformers movie (the cartoon). Using catch phrases from television shows to navigate our lives and determine how we speak to one another. In art, this is interesting: it's open source, it's sampling, it's remixing. It's the good things about the death or redefinition or authorship.

In conversation, it's the worst. It's free time x cheap entertainment x laziness. I tend to feel this way about cliche in writing, too. So, as an author or a writer or a blogger or whatever, I try to edit all of those placeholders out. The challenge is finding new ways to say things, and I think this goes for speech and relationships, too. No one can ever play "In Your Eyes" for Ione Skye again. Think of all the tender little phrased you'd love to say to your wife if you weren't so embarrassed by them because people in movies said them first.

Maybe the problem is using other people’s art to express yourself in the first place. Sometimes it's amazing (the Grey Album, for example), or the open source art projects that are coming up. But in real life it's sort of cheesy. So I think we need to learn to make our own art for our own purposes, which is why people started making art in the first place.

NK: Speaking of Open Source- which makes me think of all sorts of free downloadable content- you've been posting some bits and pieces of your novel, Milton County Power & Light up on your blog lately. I've seen a few other authors post their books online, too- Monster Island is a great example- and I'm wondering if the future of authors is similar to the future of musicians- it doesn't really seem like musicians really need record labels, and it doesn't seem like writers need publishers. Where do you think we're heading with all this?

CC: This is something people are talking a lot about, especially with things like LuLu making publishing and delivery so easy. It seems very similar to the success we’ve seen among indie bands and unsigned artists through platforms and communities like MySpace, YouTube etc.

But while I agree that musicians don't really need record labels anymore, and while writers might not need publishing houses, they still need editors. I think that's the disconnect in the analogy. A musician can throw up a demo or a crummy song on MySpace and when no one likes it they can take it down, make it better, whatever. But if you self-publish a novel before it's really ready, that's out there forever. I think we sort of understand music as more of a work in progress in the sense that demos and alternate cuts and completely unfinished songs are interesting. Boxsets and anthology albums are full of these things and people collect the bootlegs. It's not the same with writing.

That said, just like writers need editors, most musicians need producers. But then you've got this whole crop of one-man virtual bands that do it all in their bedroom on a Mac and it's amazing. Chad Van Gaalen is like that. I guess what I'm saying is that it depends on the maturity of your talent. I know that I'm not about to self-publish a novel because I know how much work I still have to do. If I wrote a perfect pop song, maybe, I'd know it. At present, my book isn't that.

So that's the practical side of it. But there's also another difference. Releasing your own album is almost a badge of honor. When your band gets big you can reminiscence about how you put out the first EP yourself and sold it out of your car and even for people who never make it past that, I think it's all very romantic. It's cool. Maybe I only think that because I haven't done it. But there's not the same kind of vibe when it comes to self-publishing. I think most writers aren't ready to say the self-publishing has the same kind of punk ethos. Even small presses who's mission is to publish new voices or avant guard stuff have editors and gatekeepers and for good reason. Someone has to go to bat for your work. Reading an experimental novel doesn't have the same built-in viral opportunities that listening to a 4 minute alt.country track does. It's just not a viral medium. This is probably why flash fiction is so popular on the web. Six-sentence stories or one-sentence stories can become memes. That's what tweets are, and people are using Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook for this kind of viral lit, mircostories, koans, whatever.

NK: Of course, none of those writing forums pay really well, either. I know from past experience that a band might be able to make money from live music shows or T-shirts. But writers don’t really have that sort of thing…

CC: As far as a paycheck, at the moment, I think it's more about building social and artistic capital than actual capital. But publishers will find a way to make more money than they currently are off of the kinds of things you're talking about. Writers will too and a few already are. Present company excluded.

NK: OK, last question. Who'd you bet on if Stephen King and John Grissom were up against each other in a cage match?

CC: Neil Gaiman.

NK: Nice.
* * *
 
 

I think we need to pause and make a distinction between Universal Human Rights and the other kind of rights that we get because we live in a certain country or under a certain government. The reason is this- I've been hearing and reading lately that Healthcare is a Universal Human Right. I don't think it qualifies as such for the following reason:

Universal Human Rights are rights that should be inherent to all people, regardless of who they are, where they live, or even when they live. If something is truly a Human Right, then it would stand to reason that it should apply to people living today as well as a million years ago and those living down the street from us as well as anyone living in the deepest parts of the most secluded jungle.

I don't think we can say this of Healthcare.

Modern medicine and sanitation are relatively new to the human experience and completely unequal in st, so for us to say that people are entitled, as humans, to healthcare is a pretty ridiculous claim. It's the same thing I'd say of voting rights or a trial by jury. These are important things that may be rights and privileges  bestowed on those living under our system of government, here in the United States of America, but they're not Universal to the Human Condition.

If you live under a dictator, you don't get the right to vote.
You'd have to actually be able to vote in order to claim the right to it.

This doesn't mean that Healthcare isn't important. I think it is. But it's not important in the same way as the right to life, liberty, and property. These are fundamental Human Rights that aren't contigent upon a person's place in the world or their station in history. That's what separates them out as the big ideals that must be defended for ALL people.

 
 
Picture

What do Terminator and Matrix have in common with Hotel Rwanda? Namely, they all deal with power struggles. OK, it may seem rather strange that I’m drawing a correlation between these films, but bear with me for a moment while I explain my position. It seems to me that most conflicts eventually rest on one of the following two areas: Values and Resources

Value conflicts are wars and battles that spring from a clash of ethnic, ethic, or moral disagreement. While there isn’t anything particularly wrong about an individual defining themselves by their nationality, religion, or ethics, once they take a stand on these things it inevitably causes small conflicts. Even at the most basic level, when one assesses themselves by a certain criteria; he tends to assess other people by these criteria as well. So if I’m proud of my American, Christian, and Pacifist ways I may hold myself in an elevated position over someone who doesn’t share the same beliefs. Even subtle criticism like this lead to bigger conflicts as I interact with those I disagree with. The outworking of my own pride can eventually become war if it’s not tended well.

Watch the Terminator series with this sort of idea in the back of your mind, and you’ll see the direct correlation between Skynet’s decision to wipe out humanity with this value conflict. The self-aware AI, of course, makes the jump from criticism to war much faster than humans would, but the principle seen in the film is very similar to what we can read into historical events like the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and Hotel Rwanda.

Each of these are value-based conflicts where the self-proclaimed superior/powerful group does its best to eliminate or convert those who don’t meet their standard.

Resource conflicts are any kind of disagreement or battle that deals with scarcity. When resources are unlimited and there is plenty of land, food, etc to go around for everyone, competition isn’t nearly as fierce and normally doesn’t result in war or death. But as soon as there are limits in place, humans always try to get as much as they can- even at the cost of others.

When we watch ads from two politicians, trading jabs, it’s basically the same thing. There can only be one President of the United States and so anyone running who wants to win will do whatever they can to grab the most votes. Votes are the limited resource.

I used to work for Universal Orlando Resort where our theme parks were continually “at war” with Disney for market share. We wanted as many tourists as possible to visit our park- rather than Disney. Time was the resources we were fighting over.

If you read into the history of Matrix movies, they basically boil down to a war based on resource problems. Robots need power and after humans nuke the sky- crippling the machines’ ability to gather solar power- their only source of fuel is the humans themselves. Humans are only enslaved because the robots want to continue functioning.

So as we watch movies like Terminator, Matrix, and Hotel Rwanda, I think it’s important to get to the bottom of conflict if we really want to avoid the violence depicted within each film. The bottom line is, we still need to answer these questions if we’re going to do anything about wars and interpersonal conflicts:

What can we do to lessen the value and resource conflicts before they grow out of control and threaten our very lives?

 
 
Picture

The other day I came home and found that the internet wasn’t working. I didn’t have anything particular that I needed to do- I think I was going to check my e-mail- but I got really nervous for a moment, wondering what I was missing because my link to the world was cut off.

It was strange, though, because for a moment after my initial panic I actually felt a sense of relief. I actually felt free. There was a sudden freedom from any obligation to respond to e-mails, Facebook updates, Tweets, and RSS feeds from GoogleReader. The internet was down and so I had a legitimate excuse to be disconnected from the world and solely focused on my family. The truth is, it’s shocking that I felt this way because only a few months ago I would have been going crazy trying to figure out how to get my connection back.

Remember that scene in Matrix where Joe Pantoliano’s character Cypher begs a Sentinel to allow him back into the Matrix? I didn’t make the correlation until now, but I’m beginning to think that his need for the Matrix is similar to our need for the internet and social networking.

Can you imagine life without our current range of technologies? Could we even go back to the way it was before personal computers, cell phones, Wikipedia, Google, and Facebook inundated our culture?

I’m hard pressed to admit it, but I think we’re already enslaved to technology. Most of us couldn’t figure out a way to grow our own food, weave our own clothes, or find water that’s safe to drink. Whether or not our own technology turns on us, I think it’s pretty safe to say that any sort of major interruption would be more than most of us could handle.

I think that’s why New Orleans eroded so quickly into madness after Hurricane Katrina.

Without our technology, we’re helpless.

So, I don’t believe that AI will kill us.
I think it’s much more likely that we’ll kill ourselves off in the wake of a major power failure.

But that’s some of the beauty of these AI Monster Movies. They may not paint an accurate picture of what the world will really be like if the robots take over, but they paint a very clear symbol of the slavery that we’ve created for ourselves. As I mentioned in the first post, it’s all very much like the Tower of Babel- we’ve placed our hope in technology rather than in God and in our fellow man.

And as a result, we’re confused. We don’t understand each other any longer. We only understand our own needs and our own beliefs.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The other day, I was unplugged and rather than spending the evening worrying about whether or not the internet would come back on, I played with my son and I spoke with my wife. I’ve been doing that a lot more lately. In fact, last night I didn’t even look at my computer for more than a few seconds.

I spent the evening with them, instead. And I’m going to be really honest…
It was much better than the Matrix.

 
 
Picture
What do Terminator, Matrix, and the Will Smith version of I, Robot all have in common?

Well for starters, they all begin with the assumption that in the future robots or computers will develop a will, a self-awareness, or a set of ethics based on their own evolution/experience rather than what they were created with. But is this true? Can computers actually transcend their own data and interact with the universe in an intelligent way?

Of course for the purposes of this blog we're going to go with a formidable AI definition, not a weak one where robots are able to make small choices about stacking their parts differently in order to traverse a room. For movies like Terminator to come to fruition, we'd have to assume that computers and robots were able to move far beyond the normal threhold of AI and into something very close to a Human's ability to reason and choose. So, when I say AI- that's what I mean. An Artificial Intellegence that closely resembles a human being's.

The lectures I’ve been listening to by Hubert Dreyfus seem to indicate that on a purely philosophical level it would be almost impossible for true AI to spring into existence within the foreseeable future. The primary reason is that AI is programmed without a holistic ontology. Without a holistic reference for the universe, robots are limited to calculated “symbol shunting” rather than significant, meaningful interactions. So unless there is a significant change in the way we’ve been doing AI- we’re going to continue getting calculated rather than intuitive results.

But how to you create a robot or computer that has the ability to understand the holistic model of how the world works? You know, a better question might be this- how do humans understand the holistic form of life?

This is one of the hardest questions to answer, because as Heidegger noted, trying to describe the way we get around in the world is like trying to describe a really functional light source. We don’t even notice the light source until there’s something wrong with it. We tend to see, instead, the things that are illuminated because of the light. Likewise, our understanding of how the world works is only apparent to us when it’s not working correctly- when we’re disoriented or confused.

And if we’re not yet able to put much of a framework around our own experience regarding how the world works- I’m fairly certain that any framework we try to put around a machine will be inherently flawed.

So, the problem for AI programmers is not just figuring out the algorithms, software, and hardware needed to make some sort of self-aware creation. Their real problem is figuring out how to translate the context of the environment into a computer in a way that will allow it to mimic human understanding of how the world works. And since none of us are really clear on how we truly understand how the world works- it may be quite a while before robots figure it out.

I know I promised some religious implications/thoughts as well… But due to time constraints, I’m not sure that I have them figured out well enough to transcribe here. If you’ve got some religious ideas why computers/robots can or cannot become truly AI let me have ‘em. I’d love to hear from you.

 
 
Picture

I love Robots and so I'm pleased to announce that Robots are the topic for this week.

Background. I watched Terminator: Salvation on Saturday with my good friend Seth and it got me thinking about AI and robots and whether or not what’s presented in Terminator, Matrix, and a number of other ‘Robots as Frankenstein’s Monster’ movies could actually happen. As it stands, I’m not really sure- but in an effort to fully explore the possibilities, I want to break this week into four different parts so that we can discuss the topic fluidly.

1. Today will be an introduction with some questions to get your reaction.
2. Wednesday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether AI can actually become self-aware and what it means to be human.
3. Thursday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether or not technology needs to begin killing us off with guns before we decide that it’s enslaved us.
4. Friday will be a political discussion about whether or not governments have the right to target ethnic groups through profiling (and even genocide?).

I can’t do an exhaustive study on robots because there are literally too many religious, philosophical, and political issues at steak in movies like these in order to sum them up in a few days. But I’m pretty sure that in one sense, all of these stories are a reiteration of the Tower of Babel- they’re all about what happens when humans place their faith, hope, and love into technology rather than on God (or even their fellow man).

You might want to read up on the Tower here and here if you’re not familiar with it. In preparation for this week, you may also want to read up on Asimov’s theories about what humans would/should do to prevent a Frankenstein’s Monster occurrence.

Questions to consider today and this week:

   Do you think AI (artificial intelligence) will ever become self-aware?
   Could we already be enslaved to technology/robots?
   Why (in fiction at least) do the things we create always rise up against us?
   Do the oppressed have the right to overthrow their oppressors?

 
 
Making an issue of one’s being is what makes us human, claims Heidegger. He calls this “making and issue of one’s being” existence and claims that this is the essence of what it means to be human. After reading Micah’s brilliant little series on Modernism/Postmodernism:

>>>>     What Is Modernism? | Examples | What Is Postmodernism? | Examples

I’m inclined to put Heidegger’s third state of being into the Postmodern category because it makes a claim against all other philosophers that “nothing” is our essence other than to make an issue of our essence. Kant argues that we are fundamentally Rational Beings, and Christians argue that we are fundamentally “Children of God” and so this claim that we are essentially and purely existence is a very “wheel-like” claim. I’m borrowing the wheel from Micah’s posts and this will make a lot more sense if you read through them- especially the Postmodern examples.

I’m probably making a fairly simple leap since Heidegger was of first importance to Derrida, Foucoult, and all the other Continental Philosophers- but bear with me as I’ve not done much study on Heidegger prior to this and even little accomplishments like this make me happy.

Now that I’ve giving a little ‘blog love,’ let me point this in a different direction, if I may.

Heidegger argues that only humans exist (his definition of existence is to “make an issue of one’s being”). He even goes as far as to say that God does not exist within this definition of existence (remember that He’s not refuting God, he’s saying that God doesn’t make an issue of his being). However, it seems to me that in the Christian worldview, God IS a Being whose essence is existence. He calls himself I AM, essentially stating that His very nature is built on His existence, thus making an issue of His own being. Following that idea, if we were made in the image of God- namely that His existence IS His nature, it would follow that our existence (and making an issue of it), would be our essence as well.

I doubt Heidegger really wanted this idea reconciled with Christianity, but there you have it. What’s done is done.

Thoughts?
 
 

This morning, I wrote that Heidegger believed that the third way of being was found within the structure of "finding one's meaning" in the outworking of Equipment Ontology. That was not correct. Heidegger believed that the way of being human is in taking a stand, or an interest in one's own being. The outworking springs from being human- not using tools or equipment (although one might use equipment as a way to "take a stand on one's being").

This is extremely difficult to understand and seems to be almost circular logic- but I'm sure that with a bit more thinking, I might make some sense of it.

Right now, it seems that Heidegger is saying that the third way of being is taking concern with one's own being. I think what he means is that this third way of being is having self awareness- but I'm probably wrong again.

Oh Heidegger...

 
 

Note: This is the guy I’m learning from right now regarding Heidegger.

I’m still learning and interacting with these ideas, so my understanding could be a bit warped or incorrect- anyone who’s done some major study on Being and Time or Heidegger should feel free to jump in and add to or correct any of what follows. But from what I’ve gathered in the lecture series I’m listening to, Heidegger thinks there are actually two additional states of being beyond the typical substance/subject ontology that is normally described by philosophers. The first is:

Substance/Subject Ontology

This state of being finds its roots in Plato, Aristotle, and subsequently most other philosophers all the way them to the present (and especially or interest to Artificial Intelligence advocates). It claims that being is a state that occurs when a substance is describable. For example, a heavy table is a being because it can be predicated by a single, atomized element. Heaviness is the chosen element describing the table- but we could also substitute brown, round, or any other basic predicate that cannot be broken down into further elements. A substance could be susceptible to a number of descriptors, but it must have at least one elemental descriptor attached to it in order for us to say that it is a substantial being.

Heidegger agrees that substance ontology is a rudimentary state of being, but warns us that it fails to capture the fullest understanding of what being really is. This is because there are certain limitations that we run into when we split a being apart into its most basic elements. As indicated by the failure of AI (we are unable, thus far, to conjoin a matrix of descriptive commands and substances in a way that replicated anything truly human), Heidegger is probably correct. Of course, an AI advocate will argue that it’s because they haven’t broken apart the brain into the fullest logical sequence of data points yet, but the reality is, there’s something other than descriptors and substance that lends itself to being. And this is where a purely substance-driven ontology is flawed.

Heidegger argues that there is an older idea that’s better suited for describing being- one of holism, connectedness, and interdependence among elements that is critical to understanding their being. He outlines some of this in his equipment ontology and more of it later in the Human Ontology.

Equipment Ontology

This second state of being, Heidegger argues, is a holistic approach to being where a substance gains its identity through it’s own attributes and also the other substances that are required for it to make sense. What it means to be a hammer, for instance, is fully dependant upon our understanding of nails, wood, and construction (among other things). A hammer on its own, apart from these other elements is not actually a hammer.

The lecturer gave a pop culture example from the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy” where an African Tribe stumbles upon an empty coke bottle that’s been dropped out of the sky from an airplane. Without a context for the bottle, they create all sorts of uses for it- a rolling pin, a weapon- none of which lend themselves toward what the thing would have been within the context of the original owner. The argument is that this coke bottle is NOT a coke bottle apart from an understanding of coke, packaging, and drinking.

Heidegger argues that a piece of equipment is only that thing when it is being used for its function. A hammer in a drawer, without a purpose, might be susceptible to the Substance Ontology- a being that is hard, black, etc. but it is not a hammer in the Equipment Ontological sense of being.

It’s simply a thing.

But here Heidegger needed to make a further distinction between humans and equipment, because we rarely want to treat people as an object or utility. Thus, he outlined the third way of being- that of being human. He calls this existence.

Existence/Human Ontology

In this third state of being, Heidegger argues that only humans exist. I know- this sounds strange, but let me explain!

He is using the word existence, not as a descriptive of being but rather as a state of being. He claims that a tree and a hammer (and even God) don’t exist in the same way that Humans do. Note: he’s not claiming that God does not exist in the same way that an atheist would. And he’s not claiming that trees and hammers don’t exist in the way that Descartes did (Descartes held a very matrixesce brain-in-a-vat interacting with other brains-in-vats paradigm that questioned the nature of reality and whether or not anything other than thought/cognitive powers truly exist).

Rather, he claims that existence is when a substance finds its meaning in engaging with equipment. A human exists when he uses a hammer to build a home and therefore calls himself a carpenter. A human exists when she uses the resources available to her to care for her children and thereby calls herself a mother. This meaning doesn’t have to be expressed. It can be subconscious. I don’t have to consider myself writer, even though I use the equipment around me to write.

So, from what I gather- meaning and identity is directly tied to what it means to be human. Humans find their identity or meaning in what they interact with which makes them different than a tree or a hammer- Or even God who gets His identity from Himself.

And that’s what Heidegger means when he says that God does not exist. Existence is tied to meaning and identity and those are things that are inherent to human beings rather than anything else that we’ve come across so far.

Here’s the thing though… I’m still not sure what Heidegger would think of a comatose man. Since he is unable to interact in a willful way and find identity in substance and equipment, is he actually human? or is he equipment (to be operated on and tested)? or is he merely substance (a piece of meat lying on a table)?

If you’re a Heidegger scholar, please correct any errors. If you want to comment on the accuracy of Heidegger’s claims or the practical application of any of these categories of being, feel free to leave comments.