“…the future of man as his will, as dependent on a human will…so as to make an end of that gruesome dominion of chance and nonsense that has hitherto been called ‘history’…”
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Natural History of Morals
Given the recent controversy surrounding the capabilities and import of ChatGPT, I would like to use this month’s piece to revisit aesthetic perspectives on AI from my initial series, Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology. I contended that technology could be interpreted as a part of nature. Viewed in a Spinozist framework, its production is inevitable and, more specifically, literally part of nature. Further, as part of an interview with Brian Leiter on Nietzsche’s naturalism, I maintained that creating technology should be viewed as necessary in the sense of our fate, consistent with his Essentialism. Finally, I suggested that the form of AI’s evolution has a bearing on ancient ontological questions, specifically, the way quantum materials transform AI invigorates strict Rationalism.
To the extent the conversation about ChatGPT is centered around its artistic capabilities, I want to shift the focus away from measuring it by an ability to be human—which is impossible, because it is only emulating real artists. Rather, we should understand its import in its production and evolution. It is significant because it itself can never be authentic, and its creation affirms our own aesthetic nature.
The question of ChatGPT’s qualitative limitations is aptly framed by Sean D. Kelly, in the context of art. He acknowledges that the technology is revolutionary, but makes the fundamental point that mimicking our nature does not equate to human creativity, because we still need the actual artists. The proper analogy for ChatGPT is the work of an artist’s apprentice: a copy, not the “authentic, original voice.” In this sense, there is no genuine creation without the artist.
This distinction is important because art best reflects our unique experience: beauty, love, humor, etc. are what define our authenticity or nature, and cannot be replicated. In this sense, I agree with Barry Smith and Jobst Landgrebe that, per our lively interview about their new book, Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, human thought is fundamentally non-logical.
A second way of appreciating ChatGPT’s inadequacies relative to human experience was recently captured in a tweet from David Chalmers, where he asked: what is sentience without the senses?
- Behavior (+) without consciousness: philosophical zombie
- Consciousness without affect: philosophical Vulcan
- Conscious thought without the senses…?
The responses ranged from God to nothing, but my answer was that he was describing something we are creating—namely, quantum AI. We have produced a pure form of intelligence that isn’t human, lacking the aesthetic dimensions of the senses. Accordingly, AI can never be the actual artist, as it lacks the sensory grounding that defines our authentic being.
However, this limitation should not be the measure of technology. This more powerful form of mathematics and logic—a tool that vastly eclipses our processing powers—should be assessed as our work of art. It can be seen as a “necessary” production or creation, in the Spinozist sense, but also in a more nuanced way. It is best understood as our fate, an interpretation which I previously explored as part of an interview with Brian Leiter on Nietzsche’s naturalism.
Brian makes a lucid case for Nietzsche’s fatalism as a kind of essentialism, where our nature is constricted to a trajectory governed by facts or psycho-physical realities that can only be sculpted, not changed entirely. A tomato plant, to use Brian’s analogy, will not produce a different fruit, but it can be cultivated. In this sense, the creation of technology is our essence as defining our course, although we can (and must) control its evolution.
To reinforce the view that we are creating AI as part of our aesthetic fate, I would like to draw on an essay from Crispin Sartwell which explores the fusion of art and nature, “The Shape of the World: What if Aesthetic Properties are Real.” Crispin writes of how art is interwoven into the world: “I am giving a plea for the materialization of art, and hence for the continuity of art with reality, the understanding of human making as an upwelling within nature, a series of natural transformations, tantamount to erosion or vegetation.”
Crispin suggests that art can be viewed as part of objective qualities—“that aesthetic properties are no more (but no less) socially constructed than size or material composition.” As he elaborates, “aesthetic features of an object—its shape, let us say, and the ways that shape means within a culture—are no more subjective than any other qualities of an object, for example its weight.” Aesthetic properties are embedded in a set of social and personal experiences, and as objective as any other property.
Suggesting a factual, aesthetic dimension of nature, where we are entangled with our artifacts and the world, reinforces the fact that the technology we are creating, most notably AI, is both part of nature and our aesthetic being. To borrow again from Crispin: “to give a full description of any thing or phenomenon, we would have to resort to aesthetic categories.”
Artistic expression distinguishes our unique nature and grounds meaning. To recall Nietzsche, without God the only alternative is creation. As he says in a notebook, “he who does not find greatness in God finds it nowhere… he must either deny it or create it.” Given the evolution of technology, we must acknowledge that AI is helping us to fill that void, and part of our authentic, aesthetic essence, by becoming a new form of our creation.
In sum, then, ChatGPT is not meaningful based on whether it can replicate human experience. It is a form of intelligence without the senses, and can never be the artist. Rather, in its absolute limitations, it highlights that creation and art define human nature, and AI is part of that aesthetic destiny.
Charlie Taben graduated from Middlebury College in 1983 with a BA in philosophy and has been a financial services executive for nearly 40 years. He studied at Harvard University during his junior year and says one of the highlights of his life was taking John Rawls’ class. Today, Charlie remains engaged with the discipline, focusing on Spinoza, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. He has worked with the APA Blog, creating the Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology Series. Charlie has also performed volunteer work for the Philosophical Society of England. You can find Charlie on Twitter @gbglax
