Thanks for your insight on this Jeffrey.  I accept almost all your criticisms, and I'll try to work on them myself.


As a general defence though, I would say that I am aware of some of the philosophical considerations you raise, eg. the greek or historical perspective, but I am approaching this from a practical/scientific (an extreme reductionist) POV.  If one were to try to translate any philosophical system faithfully to a computational/biological one it would be an exercise in futility.  I may be trying to... "carve him up, and sew together your own sort of Frankenstein, and call it an advance"... but I don't see anything wrong with this.  The bottom line, though not "responsible" philosophy, is logical and technological applicability, from which, I hope, an underlying philosophy (in the ancient sense) can be intuited.


I will give you the process thing...  Heraclitus was Heidegger's father, too!  And, Whitehead, Dewey, James, even the dying Kant, and others, including Hegel were on that page, of course...  But, this was not a new thing, at all, and Heidegger understood that.  The stuff you are thinking of here seem like processes to you I think because you are basically an analytic working in an analytic school in a static-material West, but Heidegger was not (quite) so burdened - he had his own children of Descartes to dispute with, but at least at that time genius was respected as genius no matter, and the deeper tradition from whence his thinking emerges had not been so completely forgotten if not paved over, unlike today, where he would have been only further marginalized or worse tossed out for digging under the faculty parking lot! - and was interested instead on the emergence of 'things' as 'things', to living breathing mortal critters...  Until you understand this, then you cannot understand Heidegger.  In computational intelligence, for instance in Sun's work, mortality is integrated into the motivating mathematics.  In fact, it is angst that is foundational, for Heidegger, because - in a sense - we are primarily temporal critters, being that we are dying all the time, and things only arise as things with any significance in that light.

Yes, I understand and agree with this mostly, my first "level" of understanding of Heidegger came from an understanding of angst/mortality/time as H. describes it.  And I do integrate this into the system... but where in human life does an awareness of mortality emerge?  Not for several years.  There are large amounts of logic that have to be worked out before it even makes an appearance in the system.  Starting with this as a foundation (I don't know whether Sun does this or not) is a mistake because, just like H. himself writes, there is a massive foundation of logic that comes before Angst emerges in Dasein.  Almost everything I describe is a computational foundation for Angst.  Does Sun take Angst as a premise, a given quality of the mind, or does he explain where it comes from?


This is wrong.  No one can seriously maintain that Heidegger was a behaviorist.


Apologies, I didn't mean to say he was a "behaviourist" in the sense of describing the human condition in terms of the psychological mind only, but that when he used behavioural examples he makes huge leaps from the microscopic to the macroscopic with no explanation.  There are whole passages of B&T where H. talks about nothing more than how his philosophy applies to people in everyday life... granted they tend to be examples of a point, but the force of these arguments is entirely divorced from the strength of his purely fundamental considerations.  Thus, the required "untangling" of the computational from the non-computational (or the "logical" from the "speculative")


And, the framework was not "generic."  It derives from Greek Philosophy, and until you understand the Greek proto-phenomenological system from which Heidegger emerges, you cannot understand Heidegger.



Yes, I am roughly familiar with this.  I mean generic in that... what use is his philosophy?  Is it moral?  Metaphysical?  Mental?  Hermeneutic?  Phenomenological?  One might, I think, claim all, and more.
But moreover, I mean "generic" in its scientific and technological application.  Most post-ancient(/Christian) philosophy is so abstract as to have very little scientific use, but I believe that H.'s philosophy can have a computational (and metaphysical) use but that he was not aware of this when he wrote it.  Thus, though he certainly meant for it to address the ancient's question of Being, and the ancients themselves had no concept of modern biology or computation, the philosophy can be apprehended for this purpose if read the right way.  So, it is generic in its applicability, even if not intended as such.


I am afraid that you clearly do not know what you are talking about here.  I am sorry.  You must pay due attention.  Until and unless you understand the history of ideas as did Martin Heidegger did, and as Ron Sun has worked to do as well, you have no business 'scanning on google books' an obvious forerunner to your efforts.  You are not going to remake the wheel, here.  But, you might make the old one a bit rounder.  Be careful what you dismiss, young jedi, else you toss the key.



Agreed, I don't know at all here!  Sorry, I'm just, as I said, wary.  I have read lots of interpretations of Heidegger that I find to be insubstantial.... actually, reading more of Sun's book, the part where he talks about CLARION is quite in tune with what I write, though I think he skips over some mechanisms in some parts.  I'll order the book.


Not that Dreyfus doesn't have something (useful) to say, but that, when he writes about Heidegger, he is really writing about Dreyfus-on-Heidegger.
And, the focus on equipment is the return to original techne, which for Socrates was Daedalus, whom he claimed as his forebear in constructing self-animated statues, which is what you are trying to do...  My advice is that you go back to the beginning.  Start over.  A great old friend, Pullitzer prize nominated a half-dozen times, told me as a youth that the work is not in the writing, it is in the rewriting.  I hope that you can accept this advice with the good intentions it is meant to carry.  If you want some more help, if you can call it that, then I am willing to work with you in so far as I have the time.



On Dreyfus, yes I know he has his own view on Heidegger which he likes to expound, as does everyone else, like me.  And I take the criticisms and advice gladly, thank you!