I have been provided with a ‘simple truth’ today like none other… and in one of the unlikeliest of places… my TRESemmé shampoo bottle.
A poorly crafted ‘philosophy’ can be found on the back, which really just happens to be a sophistic/psychological mess of words masquerading as Philosophy.
From our origins in salons, we have always been driven by a simple truth; every woman deserves to look fabulous without spending a fortune. TRESemmé is dedicated to creating hair care and styling products that are salon quality without the salon price.
I think this ‘simple truth’ is worthy of more examination, through a little analysis and by restating the argument differently I hope to unravel ‘simple truths’.
First, there are some assumptions that need to be worked out, and I may not have them down exactly as the ‘stylists’ at Alberto Culver International Inc. had imagined them, but I will be as charitable as possible:
Women are, essentially, not fabulous.
Looking fabulous typically costs a fortune.
Not all women have a fortune.
A salon will make you fabulous, but for a fortune.
With those in mind we can restate the argument in its entirety:
Women are, essentially, not fabulous. Because looking fabulous typically costs a fortune and not all women have fortunes to spend. A salon will make you fabulous, but for a fortune. And so, given our origins (and experience) in salons, we believe that every woman deserves to look fabulous without spending a fortune.
So now you can spend some time considering why that may be… is Alberto Culver International Inc. being run by a bunch of do-gooder socialists? Alberto Culver did recently sell their company to Unilever for nearly $4 billion dollars… Perhaps they are simply do-gooder champaign socialists, out to save ugly women from their capitalist-crushed lives.
When you think about it, they are being kind-of sexist… how exactly is their philosophy a ‘simple truth’?The ‘conclusion’ that ‘women deserve to look fabulous’ is the most difficult part to grasp… the aforementioned statement requires a great deal of explanation, a back story, some connective-philosophy. Why just women? And, if you’re going to make up simple truths, why not say something like this: ‘you are born looking fabulous, but your hair gets really fucking dirty all the time…’ I guess that’s not going to sell shampoo… for the time being I seem to be stuck using sexist-socialist hair care products… I will somehow learn to deal with it.
It seems to me very few people understand ethics at all… people use the word a lot, people talk about morality and whatever, but most of the time the purpose escapes them.
Moral psychology, for example and in my humble opinion, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding and confusion of ethics and morals… ethics are not some intrinsic quality to human beings, but rather more like a mechanical system intertwined with political science, exploding from a foundational question about the character or nature of a human being.
The attempts of moral psychology are merely a psychologism positioned against ethics in an attempt to subvert and control people (and morality) through psychology– that is not to say psychology isn’t valuable, but rather that philosophers need to be vigilant of psychologisms in all their ugly, maladroit incarnations.
There exists a great number of intellectual men and women who occupy themselves with creating a non-human intelligence, usually with materials atypical of lifeforms. These intellectuals debate the merits of intelligence, without being able to provide a proper definition of it… offering qualifications such as: “we’ll know it when we see it”, or appealing to pragmatic considerations such as: “it doesn’t matter if what we make is actually intelligent, what matters is merely whether it appears intelligent to us”. Large and lofty debates take place, and when all the hot air rises we are left with more questions than answers… patiently awaiting the fantastical robotic futurisms of great poets, such as Ray Kurzweil, to (intentionally) walk on to the world-stage, and tell us how much they are like us, while being superior in every way.
Alan Turing
Alan Turing, an intellectual man, set humankind on the direction outlined above through his paper, “Computing Machinery, and Intelligence”. Turing, in a very dialectical way, asked himself the difficult question: “can machines think?”, and from there he developed a ‘thinking’ test inspired by the ‘imitation game’, a 1950’s British party favourite, second only to drunk men dressing up as women. The test, now known as ‘the Turing test’, is the ultimate form of pragmatic exercise– it allows us to overcome the difficulties of doing actual foundational work, and jumps right to the conclusion: assume non-human intelligence is a possibility… then add interrogation– an approach that has more in common with instant ramen than academic thought.
Examining the Turing test further, with perhaps an even more critical eye, it becomes obvious that all the presumptions that go in to his implied foundation are all totally anthropomorphic. We presume thinking, or intelligence, involves speech, words, language, perception, and memory– our whole pragmatic understanding of intelligence seems to be forged in our anthropomorphic biases against animals… we assume ourselves intelligent and assume animals are not, then we tally up the differences between animals and ourselves, and, while exclaiming ‘eureka’ at the top of our lungs, consider the problem of intelligence closed.
To bolster our anthropomorphic follies, we create other spectral considerations that are even more dubious than our foundation itself: concepts such as ‘sentience’, ‘consciousness’, ‘intentionality’, etc. We proclaim human beings have these ‘qualities’ by virtue of their intelligence… and that other intelligent beings will have them too, because these ‘qualities’ must be intrinsic to intelligent beings; the loop is now closed in the most circular of ways… and when one of these intrinsic ‘qualities’ is dispelled, we can create new and more complicated versions of said ‘qualities’, eluding all refutation in the most maniacal of ways. For all we know, consciousness is akin to a video recorder hooked up to a speak-and-spell… add a couple of external sensors and you have sentience; as for intentionality, if it actually mattered, half (if not much more) of the human race would never have been born.
Termite Mound
If any of these most excellent, intellectual thinkers are to ever create or discover a non-human intelligence, they will need to subdue their child-like exuberance and accept the possibility that humans aren’t actually intelligent at all– perhaps we have a few tricks unique to our species, but there is nothing to say they are all that much better than a termite’s ability to build a mound, or a bird’s ability to sing its call. Another possibility worth considering is we have already created a non-human intelligence when we created the first computer, and, as a species, we are incapable of recognizing this non-human intelligence even while it sits in front of our faces; this ability to recognize other intelligences is a skill we did not require for survival, and therefore it never evolved in us… except for perhaps in a handful of Disney characters, such as Cinderella, who is able to both understand, and speak to birds, mice, and others with ease.
If we can cure our anthropomorphic maladies, reject the fantasies of maligned futurists, and do the hard foundational work required of us, we may begin to gleam the knowledge of what it is to be human, and from there we might begin to understand other forms of life.
The concept of “anthropomorphized robots” has pervaded Western consciousness since Fritz Lang’s momentous film, “Metropolis“. The robot in Lang’s masterpiece, Maria, instantiates her Leninist-like program in order to destroy the aristocratic class for the benefit of the proletariat. Radical political sentiments aside, Maria represented a hardened human desire– a leviathan like culmination of hopes, desires, and technical skills– a menacing essence meant to bring justice to the classes of the technically-abled and exploited. Maria took the form of a female human-being, but she could have easily have been designed after the likes of a more menacing and efficient murderous-animal… but this distinction, her embodiment as being human-like, is central and directly related to our own cognitive capacities to empathize. Our tendency to empathize with the anthropomorphic is really what sits at the core of our understanding of “roboethics”… a tendency that has a long and storied history going back to at least 17th century Japan– a country, that by no coincidence, is at the fore of the robotic-revolution.
Japan, given both its seclusion and rich history, has been the progenitor of a great number of theoretical and practical philosophies; two such noteworthy philosophies are “monozukuri“, the process of creating things, and “kaizen“, continuous improvement. Although they may appear to be obscure foreign ideals from antiquity, both philosophies are in service and still the focus of study. Japan’s transformation from a post-feudal agrarian society, to an economic and manufacturing powerhouse was largely driven by kaizen and monozukuri principles– for example, the Toyota Production System, which revolutionized the car-manufacturing process, through concepts such as “just-in-time” inventory, was founded within the traditions of kaizen and monozukuri. These manufacturing philosophies developed at a time of great social change in Japan, when new ideas and new peoples were beginning to make contact with the island-nation. Japan, following a historically predictable pattern, began to adapt innovations from the enlightenment such as mechanically driven objects, with the same monozukuri craftsmanship-ethos that had existed for centuries. The resultant product of this fusion of ideas were perhaps Japan’s first robot: “karakuri ningyo” or the mechanical doll.
These dolls became a popular product in Japan due to both the craftsmanship that went in to their production, but also due to Japan’s history and culture of doll collection— the most typical use for a mechanical doll was in the serving of tea.
A typical Tea Serving Mechanical Doll dating to the Edo period
At a little less than a foot-high, these tiny mechanical devices were designed to look similar to “hinamatsuri ningyo” or ‘Girls Day’ dolls. ‘Girls Day’ dolls were modeled after a traditional Japanese court, and they originated from ancient animistic practices devised to encapsulate ‘bad-spirits’ in inanimate, human-like objects so that they may be flushed out of existence by being thrown in to the local river. The ‘Girls Day’ dolls are highly regarded, and are to this day, laid out for display once a year.
Girls enjoying Hinamatsuri Dolls on 'Girls Day'
Japan has been dominated by an animistic belief system since prehistoric times which has developed in to what is known today as ‘Shintosim’. Shintoism is not so much a religion, but a cultural, and historical system that espouses one core belief: that everything has a “kami” or spirit. This applies to everything from ‘Girls‘ Day‘ dolls to mechanical dolls, to robotics. This belief is so pervasive that when, for example, a mechanical doll broke, the owners would feel remorse and hold funeral processions for their beloved servants.
Feeling sentiment for objects is hardly a Japanese phenomenon, it’s a common trait of human culture to anthropomorphize things. Our natural tendency to anthropomorphize allows us to intuitively and naturally connect with objects on an emotional (and comprehensible) level through the projection of one’s personality into the thing. This tendency seems to be closely connected to, or perhaps a byproduct of our abilities to empathize. Human beings are capable of empathizing with one another, and even with nonhuman animals— in evolutionary theory, the ability to empathize has served an advantage that has been reinforced through group selection over time, through perhaps an increase in hunting ability, or increased chances in group survival.
Our feelings towards robots and other anthropomorphized machines, such as the mechanical doll, are more a question of psychoanalysis– the question should not be centred around how we should treat robots, but rather why we create emotional attachments to them– making this an ethically prudential question, rather than something requiring a morally-universal insight. Plato, Aquinas, and Kant all shared similar moral theories surrounding the human treatment of nonhuman animals that seems pertinent given the prudential nature of the robot moral problem. For these philosophers, the treatment of non-human animals was wrong in the way it tends to harden one’s heart towards fellow humans. For example, it would be sensible for us to be suspicious of a person who uses robots for sexual gratification through the use of abuse or degradation– not because there is anything inherently wrong with treating a robot in this regard, but because of how this person may feel or treat fellow human beings as a result of his or her fetish. Moral Psychologists and psychoanalysts would be in the best position to test Plato, Aquinas, and Kant’s assertions in a scientific and controlled way— there is a possibility that “the human heart” doesn’t harden at all, and that the maltreatment of robots could be beneficial to the often stressed human psyche.
The dream of thinking-machines is really, currently, just a dream. Until we can unravel the mysteries of the human-mind, we may not be capable of even recognizing a nonhuman intelligence— applying Wittgenstein’s theories,
Philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein
we could never be in agreement on the level of the ‘form of life’ of a robot, making communication (and understanding) an impossibility. If we are able to understand what human intelligence is, are able to disprove Wittgenstein, and overcome all the other great barriers preventing humanity from creating an artificial but intelligent being, speaking of other-regarding roboethics is merely a futile exercise in academic fancy.
Mario is “My Lonesome Cowboy”… if you have recently visited the excellent “Pop Life” exhibit at the National Gallery… you’ll know exactly what I mean.
The curators did a superb job choosing and exhibiting from a variety of collections and artists– centred around a multiplicity of themes. Leaving the gallery, I had a new appreciation for pop-art (except for perhaps Jeff Koons).
The exhibit had some great stuff: from Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Maurizio Cattelan, and others. Despite this fantastic exhibit, one of the disconcerting elements of the gallery is its mismanagement. The overseers of the gallery, in their magnanimity, have decided to secure funding from both the government, through a redistribution of taxes, and through the collection of admissions from Canadian citizens and sojournists. The money is seemingly wasted on guards, which are situated in nearly every room.
I know the guards are simply doing their jobs and I want to avoid critiquing them, but frankly they ruin the experience. They do not blend in– from their black fascismo uniforms to their oafish surveillance techniques. They furtively follow you around, watching you as you watch the art… until, of course, you are deemed to be yet another boring patron, whereafter they return to their perch… awaiting the next group of recently debited aesthetes. Beyond the guards you will also find nearly every room has a closed circuit surveillance system– both seem grossly unnecessary.
My appreciation for the management of the gallery may be attenuated from my experience, and I sincerely apologize if guards were foisted upon the gallery by the government as an impotent attempt at pork-barrelling. The fact remains that this is both wasteful, and counter to the concept of a public gallery… you may as well handcuff patrons, and put all the art behind bars… or redesign the gallery so that it becomes a disney-style ride on rails… whoever is to blame, turning a gallery in to a panopticon serves no-one. Finally, the gallery minus special exhibitions should be free to Canadian citizens– this could probably be accomplished through the reduction of spending on wages. The upshot is that patrons would be able to enjoy the exhibits without the feeling of being on exhibit themselves.
I'm Ryan. I am interested in philosophy and its connection to the world we operate in. This website contains a collection of thoughts and other items I find interesting.
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