Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the mechanical back onto the mental, in effect naturalizing human
consciousness.
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Evidence for this hidden importation of teleology into the world of
machines abounds. Cybernetic devices such as thermostats and com-
puters, for instance, are said to “adapt” to their environments by means
of information transfers and the preprogrammed processing of that
information. Here a new anthropomorphism appears, but one where
human qualities are now projected onto machines, just as Aristotle once
read human teleology into nature. The significance—and danger—of this
rather novel “humanization” of machinery is that it allows for, even
encourages, the subsequent mechanization of humans. True, our absorp-
tion in the world has always inclined us to interpret ourselves in the
image of whatever we have found there, and this is no different today
when we speak of the body as machine, the brain as minicomputer, and
so forth. What needs to be recognized is the underlying move that makes
this hermeneutics possible, namely, the anthropomorphizing of techno-
logical devices (for example, the amusingly garrulous computer HAL in
Stanley Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey
) as a way of smoothing the
transfer of mechanistic characteristics to human beings.
We are told, of course, that the age of science and disenchantment has
left such mythologizing behind, but this is a presumption of which we
should be especially suspicious, since the ideology of objectivity remains
a human creation, no different in the end from any other cultural
product. To illustrate: Jonas has quite shrewdly pointed out that in
judging the “success” (itself an anthropomorphism) of servomechanisms,
we unthinkingly introduce such human traits as “purpose,” “concerns,”
and “adaptation,” tempting us in turn to reinterpret human conduct in
terms of the feedback of information and the mechanical processing
of messages. But, as Jonas argues, this is “an attempt to account for
purposive behavior without purpose,” since the use of information in
daily life is a means to various human ends and not the goal itself.
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Humans, in short, are not essentially feedback mechanisms but purpo-
sive beings who act ultimately on the basis of contextual meaning and
concern for their own being, and not simply in response to raw data. A
thermostat has no intrinsic purpose, but one imposed on it externally,
so that its feedback helps to regulate a heater or air conditioner in the
service to this human purpose. In truth, the messages received by a
