Knowledge and Noise: The
Role of 'Disturbance' in Communication
Karl Leidlmair, University of Innsbruck
0. Preliminary
Remarks
Critics of the
AI approach very often emphasize that AI technology is based on several
assumptions which give a distorted picture how human knowledge really works. In
the field of expert systems above all I want to mention three of them here:
representationalism, atomism of meaning and computationalism.
Representationalism
is the assumption that it is possible, at least in principle, to elicit
knowledge from an expert in the form of explicit rules and to transfer and
implement this knowledge on a computer.
It is the task of the so-called knowledge engineer to question the
expert about his various intelligent tasks in such a way that his expert
knowledge can be modeled into a representational system and - given the
transitivity of this process of modeling - can in turn be implemented on a
computer. In other words, according to representationalism, every knowing-how
can be converted into a knowing-that.
The other two
assumptions, atomism of meaning and computationalism, just to sum them up,
maintain that 'knowledge' can be deconstructed into 'chunks' of determinate and
context-free units which in turn can be manipulated according to explicit
rules.
In regard to the
representational account we can object that it mistakes a model about our use
of knowledge for the knowledge itself. We have to make a clear distinction
between an explanatory theory as to the activity in our brain and the activity
itself - the former can never exhaustively substitute the latter. This
difference becomes apparent in situations in which reflection on our skills
leads to a drastic decrease in our command of the very same skills.
In regard to the
second assumption, i.e. atomism, one can contend that context-free 'chunks' of
knowledge emerge only against a background of tacit and transparent know-how
with which we must be endowed from the very beginning. Such atomic elements or knowledge-pieces are
therefore only theoretical constructs. They owe their existence to a detached
mode of contemplation in which the primordial background knowledge has been
artificially faded out. For the same
reason, it is impossible to reconstruct this primordial knowledge simply by
assembling atomic elements which have been formerly deprived of their context.
It is not the
aim of this article to belabor all the various aspects of this criticism.
Instead I want to outline an alternative view in place of representationalism.
First of all, it must be clearly understood that any criticism of representationalism
stands and falls with the positive evaluation of the background knowledge which
cannot be substituted with explicit rules. Put in other words, we must have an
alternative in order to criticize successfully the representational account.
It was Hubert
Dreyfus who has given a clear idea of such an alternative view in his
commentary on Being and Time.[1] Please note that, although the
following ideas are drawn from Dreyfus commentary on Being on Time, they are
depicted here in a specific way according to my own preference. So I will take
responsibility for all possible misunderstandings.
Following
Dreyfus´ criticism of representationalism, two basic questions have to be
answered: 1) How can the tacit and transparent background knowledge be
phenomenologically revealed? 2) If it can be shown that the representational
account is grounded in that background knowledge how could we ever take it into
our heads to try and explain knowledge in reverse order? How could it ever
occur to us to explain the original from the derived? In short, how can the
representational account be explained? In the following I shall answer these
two questions, but in reverse order.
1. The Emergence
of the Representational Account
Before
proceeding with the second question, one preliminary remark may be in order. In
our skillful coping we normally do not take notice of the equipment we are
dealing with. We are not aware of the
availableness of the equipment, instead it has - Dreyfus treats this point
carefully in his commentary - a
tendency to 'disappear'.
This
invisibility of equipment can be made clear by elaborating the distinction of
the periphery and the center - as psychology of perception has
pointed out. Let me give three short examples. The first is the often-mentioned
example of the blind man’s cane. At the beginning - when we hand the man a cane
- it is the cane itself with its special properties (e.g. whether it is curved,
how heavy it is) which is in the center of his perception. But after a while of
getting used to it the stick will disappear from perception and become part of
the man’s peripheral perception - like his eyes or his finger tips. This means
that the medium must be invisible and
inconspicuous in order to fulfil its functional role: in order to reveal the
objects which are touched by the cane it ceases to be the center of attention.
A second rather old example of the psychology of perception may illustrate that
shift of a medium from the center of attention to the periphery of perception:
Erismann and Kohler´s example of inverted eyeglasses from some decades ago.[2] If we wear such glasses for several
days the perceived surroundings flip into their original position. So after a
period of habituation these lenses themselves become part of the inconspicuous
periphery. One further and perhaps more familiar example may illuminate this
circumstance. When we learn to drive a car we initially focus our attention to
the medium by which we drive, e.g. the gearshift (if there is any). But as soon
as we become familiar with the medium we will no longer take notice of it,
instead we will pay attention to the road, the traffic, the next exit and so
on.
What lesson can
we draw from this transparency of a medium to equipment itself? Take the
example of the blind man’s cane mentioned above: The stick disappears from
perception in that very moment when it takes over its functional role, namely
to work as an additional sense of direction. Taking over its functional role
essentially means to become something available (something ´in-order-to´).
Availableness - the ontological character of the available - and invisibility
are two related and inseparable aspects of the available. In order to
understand this invisibility of equipment thoroughly we must take into
consideration that the (unnoticed) periphery through which one thing comes to
the center of perception is not an isolable equipment, instead it is a whole
peripheral system of available things. For something to function as equipment,
there must be a whole context of other equipment, its interrelations and human
purposes: a world.[3] A good way to understand this
notion is to consider an expression which is commonly used in contemporary
German. When we are in a situation in which we have difficulty mastering a task
(when we change our job, for example) we sometimes say: This is not my world!
With this figure of speech we simply want to say that we are in the wrong
context. Similarly, available things are always encountered in a context and it
is this context which constitutes the availableness of the equipment. Children,
for example, have their own world. The availableness of the things they deal
with is quite different from that of the adult. So the world which makes up the
availableness of the equipment is by no means a totality of occurrent facts.
Now it is this
essential characteristic of the available - belonging to a world - which
normally remains invisible and inconspicuous.[4] We begin to reflect on characteristics
of equipment only in situations in which it becomes conspicuous. Becoming conspicuous in turn requires that the
equipment ceases to be available. The gearshift, for example, moves into the
focus of attention only if it doesn’t fulfil its functional role any more. So
we take notice of the being of the available
- its availableness (which in turn is grounded in its belonging to a
world) - only when there is some kind of disturbance in our daily coping with
the available. In case of disturbance a new mode of encountering things
emerges: When the coping activity is disrupted
the equipment is deprived of its availableness and, as a consequence, the sheer
occurrentness of the available comes to the fore.
This analysis of
disturbance sheds light on two aspects: On the one hand it shows that the
ontological character of equipment -
namely its availableness - must remain in the background (recognizing it
results in the elimination of the same). On the other hand it explains the
special situations in which we encounter decontextualized objects.
Dreyfus uses
such situations of breakdown to explain where the idea of a detached 'subject'
and an isolable 'object' comes in and how this leads to the mistakes of the
representational account. Dreyfus' analysis of breakdown shows in particular
that encountering objects 'outside of the mind' is by no means the way we deal
with things under normal conditions. He writes: "We shall see that there are subjects and objects but that
the tradition has introduced them too early in the analysis and, moreover, has
mischaracterized them so as to give them a foundational function they cannot
perform."[5] Unlike Heidegger, who does not
explicitly connect breakdown with the emergence of the representational
account, Dreyfus elaborates in minutious detail how different situations of
breakdown, juxtaposed as increasingly serious disturbances of skillful coping,
bring the subject/object relation to the fore.[6]
In order to
correctly understand the significance of such situations of breakdown for the
traditional account of intentionality two remarks may be in order: 1) The shift
from an involved way of encountering entities to detached reflection must be
grounded in additional theoretical considerations independent of experiences we
might gather when our skillful coping is disrupted. To encounter entities in
situations of breakdown which seem to be only occurrent is one thing, to interpret the directedness of human being towards
entities as a relationship between a detached subject and an independent object
is another thing. But in order to
achieve such a theory we must in a first
step encounter entities deprived of their availableness. 2) This deprivation
is not an event which already has been terminated; instead the transition of
involved skillful coping to detached deliberation is an ongoing process. For the same reason the availableness does not
simply disappear in situations of breakdown, it only temporarily takes its
leave. So availableness does not vanish
completely, it only gets lost during the time of transition when the breakdown
takes place.
2. How the
Phenomenon of World is Revealed
Now that I have
shown how Dreyfus explains the emergence of the representational account we can
switch to the second basic question I mentioned at the beginning: How can the
whole of the context, on the basis of which every available thing is conceivable,
be made explicit? As Dreyfus has shown along with Heidegger - I mentioned this
issue above - it is an intrinsic feature of availableness (the ontological
characteristic of the available) to be transparent and invisible. So, how can availableness, whose mode of
being is grounded in this invisibleness, ever be revealed?
First of all the
context whole becomes visible only when our everyday concernful coping is
disrupted. There must be a disturbance in the coping activity in order to
illuminate the context whole, on the basis of which all our coping takes place.
Please note that ´disturbance´ does not inevitably imply that the available has
to be destroyed - it simply indicates a rupture
in our transparent coping with things. This circumstance may be illuminated
when we recall the aforementioned examples of the psychology of perception:
Simply by refocussing the medium it loses its transparency which in turn is
tantamount to a loss of its functional role. But this access to the background
of our practical activity can create serious problems when we compare it with
the previously made remarks about the emergence of the traditional philosophy
of mind. The question arises: How can
the same event which brings decontextualization to the fore simultaneously
reveal the context whole? In order to
understand this point we have to recall what is going on when we encounter
situations of breakdown. Such situations
are not events which have already been terminated; instead they are states of
transition. So the context whole is illuminated at the very moment when it
takes its leave. Taking its leave means still being there - but in the mode of
withdrawal.
3. Conclusion
Let me now sum
up the basic point of my arguments. If we accept the last hypothesis concerning
breakdown we are confronted with the strange phenomenon that we can become
aware of the context whole only at the heavy price of being deprived of it (because
the context whole is revealed only by disturbance). Formulated in an oversubtilized way we can elaborate the
underlying idea like this: The revelation of the context whole is always
accompanied by, and coupled with, a break in that whole which in turn is the
starting point of decontextualizing. Metaphorically speaking, we can ask: Must
human society, in order to become aware of its 'soundness', first fall into
'sickness'? Does the emergence of peril simultaneously indicate the possibility
of its own reparation?
One possible
explanation for this ambivalent role of disturbance we can find in the theory
of media. It was Havelock, for example, who maintained that the cultural feats
of the ancient Greeks are a direct result of the radical change which took
place during that one transition period in which their oral tradition was
superseded by literacy. When Havelock describes this revolution he makes a
comment which is remarkable if we read it in the light of the analysis of
breakdown given above. Only in that one
short period of radical change when the oral tradition was in its decline did the Greeks become aware of
it. It was the very moment of this decline which enabled them to elaborate
their oral tradition.[7] Considering the above given
examples of the psychology of perception we can say: There must be a revolution
of media in order to free hidden peripheries from their transparency and to
draw our attention to them. Only in a retrospective view - after literacy has
endowed human society with new peripheries - the reflection on (and - at the
same time - decontextualization of) the primordial peripheries of the oral
tradition could begin. So the breakdown of orality contains two elements -
gains and losses.
There is no
doubt that the new electronic media too can be interpreted as such a revolution
of media in which new peripheries are reframed. It would be a courageous
speculation to ask whether this revolution might evoke a new cultural stage of
mankind. What could be the benefits and losses of a radical change like that?
What new awareness of our Being-in-the-World might we gain and what new kinds
of decontextualization might take place?
REFERENCES
Hubert L.
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, A commentary on Heidegger´s Being and
Time, Division I, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press 1991
Hubert L.
Dreyfus & Stuart E. Dreyfus, Mind
over Machine. The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the
Computer, New York: The Free Press 1986
Hubert L.
Dreyfus, What Computers Can’t Do, New
York: Harper & Row 1972; revised edition 1979; 3d edition: What Computers Still Can’t Do,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1993
Eric, A.
Havelock, Preface to Plato,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1963
Eric A.
Havelock, The Muse Learns To Write:
Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, New
Haven: Yale University Press 1986
Martin
Heidegger, Being and Time, New York:
Harper & Row 1962
Ivo Kohler: Über Aufbau und Wandlungen der Wahrnehmungswelt, Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 227, Wien 1951.