The End of Metaphysics and Beginning of Cybernetics

An exploration of the philosophy of the future

The following text is the script I used for my presentation given to the Buenos Aires Philosophical Society on Jan 13th 2024.

Today's talk is inspired by an essay called “the end of Metaphysics and the task of thinking” by the 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger where he discusses the course of the history of philosophy from Plato to Nietzsche and what philosophy may look like in the future. This is a relevant topic to explore, because our philosophical conceptions influence the way we interface with the world and that influences all aspects of human life from the art that we create to the governance models we live under. 

To understand the end of something we must first understand how it began. From its inception, philosophy has been primarily oriented towards the answering of metaphysical questions.  

Heidegger goes further in his essay to say,

“Philosophy is metaphysics. Metaphysics thinks beings as a whole— the world, man, God — with respect to Being, with respect to the belonging together of beings in Being.”

That sentence is quite abstract as Heidegger can be at times but I interpret it as saying: metaphysics asks What does it mean for a “being” (me, you, this table, for example) to exist in relation to existence as a whole?

Let's explore what that means in more detail. Metaphysics, as is commonly defined, is a branch of philosophy that explores the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical thinkers throughout history have dedicated themselves to answering questions that can’t be solved empirically, such as:

What is the nature of existence? 

How can things change yet remain the same? 

Or what does it mean for something to cause another?

Because of the nature of this way of thinking, especially amongst the Greeks and early Christians, the answers to these metaphysical questions were often presented in the form of universals. Broad conceptual systems of thought that were said to correspond to the fundamental nature of reality. 

Plato's Theory of Forms is a prime example of this type of thinking where he suggests that the material world as perceived by our senses is not the real world, but only a shadow or a copy of the real world. The real world, according to this theory, exists in an abstract, non-physical realm which contains the perfect, immutable "Forms" or "Ideas" of all things. And that this realm is accessible only through the mind, not through the senses. 

Another example is Plotinus's idea of "The One" as the ultimate, transcendent source of all existence. For him, "the One" is the absolute, ineffable origin of everything, and everything emanates from it. In Plotinus' view, all things strive to return to "the One.". Human souls, through philosophical contemplation and the pursuit of virtue, can ascend the hierarchical chain of being and become reunited with "the One." So the idea is that “the One” created the many and the goal or telos of the many is to return to the One. To the source. 

This metaphysical way of thinking separates the thinker from the world. The metaphysician becomes a self contained subject hovering over the world, projecting their ideas about how the world is theoretically constituted from above. 

From these conceptual systems, philosophers through the influence of institutions then constructed broad systems of governance that were based on their philosophical first principles of thought. Plato believed that philosophers, through their ability to reason and their love of wisdom, are best suited to grasp the Forms. They, therefore, have the responsibility to lead society, as outlined in his work "The Republic."

This top down, rationalistic way of thinking shaped much of Western civilization, and enabled the glory, innovation and also injustice intrinsic to its course of development. However, as the West entered into modernity, the foundations of this metaphysical thought became shaken to the core and their influence on the minds of thinkers has been diminishing ever since. 

Here I will read some passages from Heidegger's essay:

“What is meant by the talk about the end of philosophy? We understand the end of something all too easily in the negative sense as a mere stopping, as the lack of continuation, perhaps even as decline and impotence. In contrast, what we say about the end of philosophy means the completion of metaphysics.

The old meaning of the word “end” means the same as place: “from one end to the other” means from one place to the other. The end of philosophy is the place, that place in which the whole of philosophy’s history is gathered in its most extreme possibility. End as completion means this gathering. Throughout the whole history of philosophy, Plato’s thinking remains decisive in changing forms. Metaphysics is Platonism. Nietzsche characterizes his philosophy as reversed Platonism. With the reversal of metaphysics which was already accomplished by Karl Marx, the most extreme possibility of philosophy is attained. It has entered its final stage.”

Nietzscheanism and Marxism are both anti-metaphysical in that they both deny “The One”, and that the goal of life is to move back towards it. They posit that the goal of life is to disperse away from this undifferentiated point of creation. 

Nietzsche, with his genealogical thinking, posits that the development of man and his thought should be towards individuation, specialization, and adaptive biological development which is thus away from Plotinus’s concept of “the One”. 

And Marx’s historical materialism posits that the further back in time you travel, the more oppressive and brutish the conditions of life were. For him, history is a progressive development leading towards increasing emancipation the further forward you travel in time. 

In both thinkers there is an opposition to the origin and a movement towards an imagined utopian future.

Heidegger continues:

“To the extent that philosophical thinking is still attempted, it manages only to attain an epigonal renaissance and variations of that renaissance. Is not then the end of philosophy after all a cessation of its way of thinking? To conclude this would be premature.”

Ok so he says we cant jump to conclusions about what that end of philosophy means. 

“We forget that already in the age of Greek philosophy a decisive characteristic of philosophy appears: the development of sciences within the field which philosophy opened up. The development of the sciences is at the same time their separation from philosophy and the establishment of their independence. This process belongs to the completion of philosophy. Its development is in full swing today in all regions of beings. This development looks like the mere dissolution of philosophy, and in truth is precisely its completion.”

What he is saying is that science is the child of philosophy and the child is now carrying on the torch of its father.

“Philosophy turns into the empirical science of man, of all of what can become for man the experiential object of his technology, the technology by which he establishes himself in the world by working on it in the manifold modes of making and shaping. All of this happens everywhere on the basis of and according to the criterion of the scientific discovery of the individual areas of beings.

No prophecy is necessary to recognize that the sciences, now establishing themselves, will soon be determined and steered by the new fundamental science which is called cybernetics. This science corresponds to the determination of man as an acting social being. For it is the theory of the steering of the possible planning and arrangement of human labor. Cybernetics transforms language into an exchange of news. The arts become regulated-regulating instruments of information.

The development of philosophy into the independent sciences which, however, interdependently communicate among themselves ever more markedly, is the legitimate completion of philosophy. Philosophy is ending in the present age. It has found its place in the scientific attitude of socially active humanity. But the fundamental characteristic of this scientific attitude is its cybernetic, that is, technological character. The need to ask about modern technology is presumably dying out to the same extent that technology more definitely characterizes and regulates the appearance of the totality of the world and the position of man in it.”

Ok so in summary. 

“Philosophy is metaphysics. Metaphysics thinks beings as a whole with respect to Being, with respect to the belonging together of beings in Being.”

For Heidegger, metaphysical thinking characterized a chapter of human thought that is now coming to a close. However from the death of metaphysics comes the birth of the empirical sciences as an independent domain. And science is moving toward cybernetic, technological thinking. Heidegger implies in this, that cybernetics is the metaphysics of the technological age. Following this line of thought, we will now shift our attention to cybernetics and what it may be able to offer for this new epoch of human development.

Cybernetics

Firstly What does the word cybernetics mean? 

Cybernetics comes from the Greek word “kubernētēs” which means steersman. The word was adapted by the founder of the field of cybernetics, American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener, to mean the study of self-regulating mechanisms. 

In his book on cybernetics published in 1948, he defined it as: the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. 

Let's unpack this definition.

You will notice that “control and communication” are linked with an “and”. Implying that you can't have control of a system without communication with it, or said in another way, without feedback from the system as to its current state of being. 

“The animal and the machine” are also connected in this way. By this Wiener means that in whatever form a system takes whether it is a transfer of hormones in a body or bytes in a computing system, cybernetics is about the study of the feedback and inter-relation between variables in that system. Cybernetics does not discriminate whether that system is biological, social, mechanical or electronic.

It also implies that there can be cybernetic systems involving both living and non living entities so long as there is control and feedback involved between the parts. 

Wiener's development of the idea of cybernetics during World War II is closely linked to his work on anti-aircraft targeting systems. A significant problem faced by anti-aircraft defence during the war was accurately predicting the flight path of fast-moving enemy aircraft. Traditional methods of targeting were largely ineffective because they could not account for the constant changes in an airplane's speed and direction.

Wiener's work focused on developing a mathematical theory that could predict the future position of an aircraft based on its current trajectory and speed. This involved creating systems that could continuously adjust their predictions based on new data - a process known as feedback. He worked on integrating feedback loops into the targeting systems, allowing for anti-aircraft gunners to adjust their aim in real-time based on the observed motion of the target. Thus a part mechanical and part human cybernetic system. 

Wiener's experiences and insights gained from this military application led him to generalize the concept of feedback and control. He realized that these principles were not just applicable to military technology but could also be extended to engineering, biology, neuroscience, sociology and computer science to create a general theory of how to understand and create systems that can self regulate, and adapt to changing environments.

An excellent example of a cybernetic system in the human body is the regulation of blood glucose levels. This system demonstrates the principles of feedback and control, central to cybernetics, and involves several components that interact to maintain homeostasis.

Here's how it works:

The pancreas plays a crucial role in monitoring the levels of glucose in the bloodstream. When blood glucose levels rise, such as after eating, the pancreas detects this increase.

In response, the pancreas secretes insulin, a hormone that helps cells absorb glucose from the bloodstream for energy or storage, thus lowering the blood glucose level.

Conversely, if blood glucose levels fall too low, perhaps due to fasting or heavy exercise, the pancreas releases another hormone, glucagon. Glucagon stimulates the liver to release stored glucose, increasing blood glucose levels.

This system is a classic example of a negative feedback loop, where the response (release of insulin or glucagon) counteracts the initial stimulus (high or low blood glucose level), thus maintaining an equilibrium or steady state within the body. Such mechanisms are fundamental in cybernetics, emphasizing the interconnectedness and self-regulating nature of complex systems.

Here I will also note that unlike metaphysics or older forms of empirical science which think about unified universal concepts or isolated units of information, Cybernetics thinks about discrete systems and the inter-relations of the variables within it. 

Humberto Maturana, a scientist and cybernetician argued that, “perception is not fundamentally representational. And to speak of an objectively existing world is misleading, for the very idea of a world implies a realm that preexists its construction by an observer. Certainly there is something ‘out there’, which for lack of a better term we can called ‘reality’. But it comes into existence for us, and for all living creatures, only through interactive processes determined solely by the organism’s own organization.”

For example, the world of the frog is very different from the world of the human. And to speak of the human’s world says as much as it does about the world, as it does about the human. We can't remove ourselves from the phenomena we are studying. 

So he believed that dynamic systems are self-organized according to their own internal structures. They can only respond to their environment based on the affordances of their self-organization, and not outside of that. This integral, or holistic view of science orients research to systems of interaction instead of just individually isolated phenomena. 

So in summary, cybernetics is a way of thinking that explores how systems—whether they are biological, mechanical, social, or a combination—control themselves, process information, and adapt to changes in their environment.

Differences Between Metaphysics and Cybernetics

Cybernetics posits that Information must be informed by feedback

For an agent to steer a system towards a desired direction, the agent must be in communication with the system and willing to receive feedback from it so that it can adapt its actions to the changing environment. 

This cybernetic approach to information brings into view a new subject that is open and receptive to the outside world. 

Contrasted with the metaphysical approach that projects a conceptual paradigm onto the world from above it without taking in feedback of the environment.

The cybernetic approach is social, horizontal and dynamic in orientation as opposed to mental, vertical and based on fixed universals. 

Cybernetics is about action over contemplation

Cybernetician Stafford Beer coined the heuristic: the purpose of a system is what it does. The emphasis here is that systems are not things in themselves but rather, ways of behaving.  

Reality exists only within the scope of what we can become conscious of by communication with. What is real is what speaks to us. What we can reach out to, touch, engage with and get feedback from. All else is idle speculation. 

Cybernetic organisms (whether biological or not) are not meant to manipulate representations, they are intended to act in the world. To orient themselves in a changing environment. 

The difference between metaphysics and cybernetics can be likened to the difference between having a plan and planning

Laying out a 100 point plan for achieving your goals is not effective because that theoretical process involves no feedback mechanism and so on point 5 along the plan you may encounter an immovable obstacle that inhibits the process from continuing as planned. 

Planning on the other hand is about building up your capabilities and connections as best as possible so that when an opportunity arises, you are in an optimal position to take advantage of it to push yourself forward. The goal or aim can be laid out in general detail but the specifics should be dictated by feedback from action in the world.

In cybernetics, knowledge is local not global

The scope of a cybernetic system is bound by how many variables it can interact with in its environment through feedback processes. In this way, Knowledge or our ability to ascertain the Truth of a matter is made locally, not universally. Truth is bound by the fidelity and scope of a system's communication with its environment. 

Cybernetic thinking indicates that the optimal structures of organization are smaller high trust collectives marked by high degrees of internal communication creating synchronization of information and alignment of incentives. Organizations where all parts are in alignment as to their individual and collective tasks are much more agile and adaptive to their environment allowing for successes to be rapidly amplified and failed attempts can be quickly filtered out.  

Unlike more classically oriented organizational structures (such as government ministries or legacy media companies) that are often large top down structured, behemoths, that because of their size and lack of clear feedback mechanisms cannot easily pivot and adapt to change. 

Cybernetics and its Impact 

The term "cybernetics" is not as commonly used today as it once was. This decline in usage can be attributed to the evolution of the field: the foundational concepts and insights of cybernetics have been absorbed and integrated into various specialized fields. As a result, the principles of cybernetics are now applied within these domains, albeit under different names and contexts. This integration has led to significant impacts across a wide range of disciplines. For instance:

In Biology and Neuroscience: Concepts from cybernetics have enhanced our understanding of biological systems, particularly in how organisms regulate and control their internal processes. In neuroscience, these ideas have been pivotal in exploring how the brain processes information and maintains homeostasis.

Cybernetic thinking had a significant impact on the field of psychology, particularly in influencing the shift from psychoanalysis to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Cybernetics, with its emphasis on observable systems and feedback mechanisms, influenced psychologists to focus more on observable behaviours and thought patterns rather than the unconscious mind emphasized in psychoanalysis. This led to a more empirical and measurable approach to understanding and treating psychological issues. Therapists using CBT focus on identifying and altering negative feedback loops that lead to dysfunctional behaviour or thought patterns. This has steered the psychological field towards a more goal-oriented, adaptive approach to therapy.

Cybernetics has even played a role in the field of finance. George Soros the billionaire hedge fund manager has created a general theory of reflexivity based on applying cybernetic analysis to the stock market. Reflexivity in this context refers to a feedback loop where the participants in a system are not only acting on the system but also reacting to the system and changing their behaviour based on their perceptions and interpretations of what's happening within that system. Reflexivity contributes to market cycles and volatility because when market participants react to price movements (whether rational or irrational), their actions can exacerbate trends, leading to overvaluations or undervaluations. This creates cycles of booms and busts that are more extreme than they would be based solely on fundamental economic indicators. This understanding is crucial for investors and analysts who seek to navigate the complex dynamics of financial markets.

But nowhere can the impact of cybernetics be more felt than in the domain of Computing technology and Artificial intelligence today. Quoting from an MIT article on the subject:

“Among its most traceable and significant legacies came through the person of J.C.R. Licklider, an MIT psychologist who attended the Macy Cybernetics Conferences. In 1960, he wrote a seminal paper, called “ManComputer Symbiosis” that employed cybernetic ideas to lay a roadmap for the future development of interactive computing. Licklider went on to become the founding director of DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office. Licklider’s research program, his cybernetic vision, and his disciples played direct, critical roles in forming the fields of Artificial Intelligence, computer graphics, among others, and then built the Arpanet, progenitor of the Internet.”

Now obviously cybernetics is not as robust of a system as metaphysics because it has only been around for the past 80 years compared with the 2000 years of the metaphysical tradition. However, I believe cybernetics represents a marked development in the history of thought that can and should be further studied to uncover more powerful insight that can reshape our perceptions and the way we interact with the world around us. 

Thank you for listening.