Excellent essay, thank you. It seems to me that techno-optimists are still stuck in Newtonian physics - it's as if quantum physics (already 100+ years old) had never been suggested. That's why the human brain is called a computer, and why the lie that "the brain produces consciousness" is forever being pushed as 'obviously it does' - a massaging of mass consciousness only possible by Rationality being promoted as the sum-total of human consciousness - missing out on aspects of 'aura' such as Will, Soul, Inspiration, Intuition, Imagination, Instinct - that which partly marks 'human' as distinct from 'machine' - a whole quantum-world of activity that AI with its manipulation of 0s & 1s, and/or gates, cannot reach.
What is scary is the narrative that repeats ad nauseam that humans are inferior to machines - done so by defining humans mere 'rational' computers, meat-machines - where they compare unfavourably in this straw horse set-up. And this false and dangerous narrative seems to be beginning to stick in the public mind. Soon, humans will be begging for a chip so as 'not to be left behind' - a request based on the self-belief they are 'lesser' than machines.
I also understand what you're clearly saying here about the 'ad nauseum narrative' of mass consciousness and humans being inferior to machines. I dearly hope you are wrong. Each of us is unique.
Thank you. If more people knew how to tap into their deep creativity which resides in the creative soul/muse/genius/vocation/calling, they'd be so fulfilled 'doing their thing' that the the whole idea of humans-inferior-to-machines would never gain any traction whatsoever. From history, there are plenty of examples of what happens to people who are considered to be 'lesser humans', or even worse - less than human'.
This is a great point--the anxiety which is produced when we compare ourselves with machines seems to speak to a sense of absence within us; it reveals a need which we didn't know we had, a need to feel adequate or even superior.
I finally got around to reading this essay (and I am slowing making my way through your back catalog) and wanted to offer a few comments. They are something of a brain dump, but hopefully you can make decent sense of them.
1. Is Benjamin's account of "aura" on which your argument depends limited to the visual arts, i.e. paintings and the like? Certainly there can be no disputing the fact that people are willing to go to great lengths and great expense to see or even own a particular painting, rather than settle for a reprint or a digital image. But I wonder, if we look at "artwork" more expansively, does that still hold true? I am thinking in particular of music or even the performing arts in general. Music as an art, in an important respect, depends upon reproducibility and has always so depended: whether it is a group of musicians performing a Mozart composition or if it is some kind of recording, the appreciation of music has long depended on it being reproduced over and over again. Although there are some who would travel to see original Mozart sheet music, they would be in the minority and, I think, would be missing the point of the artwork in an important respect. If that is all correct, then music does not have an "aura" in the way that paintings do. The unique artifact of music does not seem particularly significant to our enjoyment or appreciation of music.
(As an aside, I am deliberately ignoring modern performers in concert, for which people do pay a great deal of money to see the unique artifact--i.e. the performer themself--and not merely a reproduction. Mozart is a more useful example because no one can ever see him in concert; he is more analogous to painters etc.)
It seems to me, however, that there may be something aura-like with music. I think the provenance of a piece of music matters for a great many people, even if they cannot articulate a precise reason. It matters for people whether music is made by one composer, by a committee, by an AI, or by a random-number generator. So while there might not be a significant unique artifact associated with a piece of music, it has something aura-like in having a unique provenance that we know and bear in mind when enjoying music.
I am not precisely sure how this bears on your account of anthropological aura, but it may be helpful to bear in mind when developing your analogy between a work of art and a human being.
2. At one point in your essay, you distinguish "aura" from "consciousness." I do not have any concerns with this distinction or your working definition of "aura," which seems reasonable and helpful. But the invocation of "consciousness" got me thinking.
As you noted, the manufacture of AI is concerned with its features, and much of our hand-wringing concerns AI (eventually) having all the same features as human beings. Put otherwise, a sufficiently advanced AI would be objectively identical to a human being (in the most important respects). I think the language of objectivity is helpful here. Analyzed as an object, the AI would have all the same properties, qualities, etc. What an AI would lack, however, is subjectivity. AI would not have the self-consciousness which distinguishes persons from mere objects. This might be a reasonable ground for discovering the "human difference" without falling into "the human being of the gaps". This is because subjectivity is not simply another feature to be added on to a pile of other features, but is qualitatively and categorically different from all those objective qualities. Indeed, subjectivity (call it if you will "consciousness") cannot be objectively assessed because as soon as you objectify subjectivity, it stops being subjectivity. Of course, using "subjectivity" to distinguish human beings from AIs raises a whole host of issues ("Where does subjectivity come from? What happens if it emerges in AI? How do I recognize subjectivity in another?"), but these in my view these are issues to be confronted rather than ignored. In short, subjectivity may offer us a feature that distinguishes persons from AI because it is a "feature" unlike any other.
You touched on this above issue in quoting Mattin, where he wrote, "I, a human being, see you, another human being." Such a declaration can only be made by a self-conscious subject and depends on a capacity to somehow recognize other subjects. If subjectivity were somehow to emerge in an AI and we were capable of recognizing it, would Mattin's quotation be valid for AIs? "I, a [human] self-conscious subject, see you, another [artificial] self-conscious subject."
As I said, these are more or less a brain dump, but hopefully they are a somewhat helpful brain dump. Thank you for your essay and I look forward to the next!
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. All good points—quite intelligible, in fact.
1. I think Benjamin would point out that, unlike visual media, music is a temporal art, which means that its “aura” flows from the moment of its creation. All forms of its reproduction—notes written on a page and audio recordings alike—are thus derivative of its original worldly appearance. So I think live performances are the more illustrative place to look and shouldn’t be bracketed. To some extent, I think this is responsible for the fact that musicians now make most of their income by touring rather than through record sales: namely, as its digital proliferation has brought down the value of reproductions of their music, people remain willing to pay to see the original fount of creative energy which made it in the first place—precisely because this is what no reproduction is successful in replicating. I would understand sheet music to be a derivative form of the more original human activity which it attempts to reproduce. In fact, the two stand in a similar relation to one another as do speech and text: one is an artificial and derivative transcription of the other more original phenomenon.
2. Although I structured this around Benjamin due to the fact that he writes about media, I am making what is essentially a Heideggerian argument. I only really noticed this after posting this essay, and, although I hope it still manages to say something useful, my underlying point here isn’t very original. I say that I think we lack a term for what I go on to call the anthropological aura, but, in hindsight, this isn’t really true: I’m naming something very close to dasein or being-in-the-world in Heidegger’s sense. When I clarify that I’m not simply talking about ‘consciousness’ or ‘the soul’, this is for exactly the same reason that Heidegger insists in Being and Time that dasein is neither of these things—that it isn’t a substance which possesses attributes that are different in some way from the world itself; the ‘anthropological aura’ is the original appearance of human existence in the world, prior to its objectification in thought or its reproduction in technological practice.
You’re right that AI raises all sorts of questions about consciousness—you’ve even named some of them. As you know, this is an ongoing debate within the philosophy of mind which touches on fundamental issues, and it isn’t about to be settled. I’m trying to skirt around those questions here, in part because different people will draw different conclusions about the viability of artificial ‘consciousness’. But you’re right that, for some, the sort of irreducible subjectivity you’re pointing to will remain the best answer to the ‘humanity of the gaps’ problem.
"While the mechanical reproduction of an artwork duplicates the features of that particular work, algorithms are not typically designed to replicate the capabilities of any one individual, but rather the capabilities of human beings at large." <-- On this important distinction, I think algorithms are even more dangerous since they not only get us away from the "original," but also lead us to believe that there is no original to begin with, i.e. that there is only "humanity" and no particular "human being."
Very nicely done. Much to say, but for now, I think Benjamin missed something that helps you. As you point out, even in the age of mechanical reproduction, we do care about the aura. Now you might argue the aura that we care about is essentially social -- "this" is an "important" painting -- but it is the collective esteem of fellow humans that we feel we too should respect, or at least go to Italy (or any great museum) to check out for ourselves. Anyway, more later, maybe. For now, very well done!
Yes, I think it's important that at the root of this distinction is a choice about what we consider important and what we don't. Do we care about the aura? Whether we do or not--and, if we do, the extent to which we do--will be both a social phenomenon and also a consequence of the media environment we have created for ourselves. I think Benjamin is right that our reverence for the aura has been weakened by modern media technologies, but it hasn't collapsed completely; many of us continue to give the aura its due every time we visit a museum.
Thank you, Vincent! Yes, that movement is really central to this whole issue--the replacement of the individual with the general, the particular with the universal.
I like where you are headed. I see parallels to a piece I wrote a while back, and would be curious to hear your take and if you see parallels yourself: https://tmfow.substack.com/p/the-human-normativity-of-ai-sentience
Part of me also makes a connection between what you are reaching for with "anthropological aura", and what I've coined the ontic, the that-ness of being, "that there is something to experience", a concept I describe in more detail e.g. here https://tmfow.substack.com/p/the-epistemic-and-the-ontic and here https://tmfow.substack.com/p/experience-and-immersion
Do you see a similar connection? If not, how do they differ to your view?
Excellent essay, thank you. It seems to me that techno-optimists are still stuck in Newtonian physics - it's as if quantum physics (already 100+ years old) had never been suggested. That's why the human brain is called a computer, and why the lie that "the brain produces consciousness" is forever being pushed as 'obviously it does' - a massaging of mass consciousness only possible by Rationality being promoted as the sum-total of human consciousness - missing out on aspects of 'aura' such as Will, Soul, Inspiration, Intuition, Imagination, Instinct - that which partly marks 'human' as distinct from 'machine' - a whole quantum-world of activity that AI with its manipulation of 0s & 1s, and/or gates, cannot reach.
What is scary is the narrative that repeats ad nauseam that humans are inferior to machines - done so by defining humans mere 'rational' computers, meat-machines - where they compare unfavourably in this straw horse set-up. And this false and dangerous narrative seems to be beginning to stick in the public mind. Soon, humans will be begging for a chip so as 'not to be left behind' - a request based on the self-belief they are 'lesser' than machines.
Excellent essay, agreed.
I also understand what you're clearly saying here about the 'ad nauseum narrative' of mass consciousness and humans being inferior to machines. I dearly hope you are wrong. Each of us is unique.
I appreciate your thoughtful response.
Thank you. If more people knew how to tap into their deep creativity which resides in the creative soul/muse/genius/vocation/calling, they'd be so fulfilled 'doing their thing' that the the whole idea of humans-inferior-to-machines would never gain any traction whatsoever. From history, there are plenty of examples of what happens to people who are considered to be 'lesser humans', or even worse - less than human'.
This is a great point--the anxiety which is produced when we compare ourselves with machines seems to speak to a sense of absence within us; it reveals a need which we didn't know we had, a need to feel adequate or even superior.
Hello Patrick,
I finally got around to reading this essay (and I am slowing making my way through your back catalog) and wanted to offer a few comments. They are something of a brain dump, but hopefully you can make decent sense of them.
1. Is Benjamin's account of "aura" on which your argument depends limited to the visual arts, i.e. paintings and the like? Certainly there can be no disputing the fact that people are willing to go to great lengths and great expense to see or even own a particular painting, rather than settle for a reprint or a digital image. But I wonder, if we look at "artwork" more expansively, does that still hold true? I am thinking in particular of music or even the performing arts in general. Music as an art, in an important respect, depends upon reproducibility and has always so depended: whether it is a group of musicians performing a Mozart composition or if it is some kind of recording, the appreciation of music has long depended on it being reproduced over and over again. Although there are some who would travel to see original Mozart sheet music, they would be in the minority and, I think, would be missing the point of the artwork in an important respect. If that is all correct, then music does not have an "aura" in the way that paintings do. The unique artifact of music does not seem particularly significant to our enjoyment or appreciation of music.
(As an aside, I am deliberately ignoring modern performers in concert, for which people do pay a great deal of money to see the unique artifact--i.e. the performer themself--and not merely a reproduction. Mozart is a more useful example because no one can ever see him in concert; he is more analogous to painters etc.)
It seems to me, however, that there may be something aura-like with music. I think the provenance of a piece of music matters for a great many people, even if they cannot articulate a precise reason. It matters for people whether music is made by one composer, by a committee, by an AI, or by a random-number generator. So while there might not be a significant unique artifact associated with a piece of music, it has something aura-like in having a unique provenance that we know and bear in mind when enjoying music.
I am not precisely sure how this bears on your account of anthropological aura, but it may be helpful to bear in mind when developing your analogy between a work of art and a human being.
2. At one point in your essay, you distinguish "aura" from "consciousness." I do not have any concerns with this distinction or your working definition of "aura," which seems reasonable and helpful. But the invocation of "consciousness" got me thinking.
As you noted, the manufacture of AI is concerned with its features, and much of our hand-wringing concerns AI (eventually) having all the same features as human beings. Put otherwise, a sufficiently advanced AI would be objectively identical to a human being (in the most important respects). I think the language of objectivity is helpful here. Analyzed as an object, the AI would have all the same properties, qualities, etc. What an AI would lack, however, is subjectivity. AI would not have the self-consciousness which distinguishes persons from mere objects. This might be a reasonable ground for discovering the "human difference" without falling into "the human being of the gaps". This is because subjectivity is not simply another feature to be added on to a pile of other features, but is qualitatively and categorically different from all those objective qualities. Indeed, subjectivity (call it if you will "consciousness") cannot be objectively assessed because as soon as you objectify subjectivity, it stops being subjectivity. Of course, using "subjectivity" to distinguish human beings from AIs raises a whole host of issues ("Where does subjectivity come from? What happens if it emerges in AI? How do I recognize subjectivity in another?"), but these in my view these are issues to be confronted rather than ignored. In short, subjectivity may offer us a feature that distinguishes persons from AI because it is a "feature" unlike any other.
You touched on this above issue in quoting Mattin, where he wrote, "I, a human being, see you, another human being." Such a declaration can only be made by a self-conscious subject and depends on a capacity to somehow recognize other subjects. If subjectivity were somehow to emerge in an AI and we were capable of recognizing it, would Mattin's quotation be valid for AIs? "I, a [human] self-conscious subject, see you, another [artificial] self-conscious subject."
As I said, these are more or less a brain dump, but hopefully they are a somewhat helpful brain dump. Thank you for your essay and I look forward to the next!
Hi Bryan,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. All good points—quite intelligible, in fact.
1. I think Benjamin would point out that, unlike visual media, music is a temporal art, which means that its “aura” flows from the moment of its creation. All forms of its reproduction—notes written on a page and audio recordings alike—are thus derivative of its original worldly appearance. So I think live performances are the more illustrative place to look and shouldn’t be bracketed. To some extent, I think this is responsible for the fact that musicians now make most of their income by touring rather than through record sales: namely, as its digital proliferation has brought down the value of reproductions of their music, people remain willing to pay to see the original fount of creative energy which made it in the first place—precisely because this is what no reproduction is successful in replicating. I would understand sheet music to be a derivative form of the more original human activity which it attempts to reproduce. In fact, the two stand in a similar relation to one another as do speech and text: one is an artificial and derivative transcription of the other more original phenomenon.
2. Although I structured this around Benjamin due to the fact that he writes about media, I am making what is essentially a Heideggerian argument. I only really noticed this after posting this essay, and, although I hope it still manages to say something useful, my underlying point here isn’t very original. I say that I think we lack a term for what I go on to call the anthropological aura, but, in hindsight, this isn’t really true: I’m naming something very close to dasein or being-in-the-world in Heidegger’s sense. When I clarify that I’m not simply talking about ‘consciousness’ or ‘the soul’, this is for exactly the same reason that Heidegger insists in Being and Time that dasein is neither of these things—that it isn’t a substance which possesses attributes that are different in some way from the world itself; the ‘anthropological aura’ is the original appearance of human existence in the world, prior to its objectification in thought or its reproduction in technological practice.
You’re right that AI raises all sorts of questions about consciousness—you’ve even named some of them. As you know, this is an ongoing debate within the philosophy of mind which touches on fundamental issues, and it isn’t about to be settled. I’m trying to skirt around those questions here, in part because different people will draw different conclusions about the viability of artificial ‘consciousness’. But you’re right that, for some, the sort of irreducible subjectivity you’re pointing to will remain the best answer to the ‘humanity of the gaps’ problem.
Thanks again for reading.
A fascinating and brilliant piece.
"While the mechanical reproduction of an artwork duplicates the features of that particular work, algorithms are not typically designed to replicate the capabilities of any one individual, but rather the capabilities of human beings at large." <-- On this important distinction, I think algorithms are even more dangerous since they not only get us away from the "original," but also lead us to believe that there is no original to begin with, i.e. that there is only "humanity" and no particular "human being."
Very nicely done. Much to say, but for now, I think Benjamin missed something that helps you. As you point out, even in the age of mechanical reproduction, we do care about the aura. Now you might argue the aura that we care about is essentially social -- "this" is an "important" painting -- but it is the collective esteem of fellow humans that we feel we too should respect, or at least go to Italy (or any great museum) to check out for ourselves. Anyway, more later, maybe. For now, very well done!
Yes, I think it's important that at the root of this distinction is a choice about what we consider important and what we don't. Do we care about the aura? Whether we do or not--and, if we do, the extent to which we do--will be both a social phenomenon and also a consequence of the media environment we have created for ourselves. I think Benjamin is right that our reverence for the aura has been weakened by modern media technologies, but it hasn't collapsed completely; many of us continue to give the aura its due every time we visit a museum.
Thank you, Vincent! Yes, that movement is really central to this whole issue--the replacement of the individual with the general, the particular with the universal.