Oswald Wiener's Theory of Thought (PDF)

As a versatile and creative thinker, Oswald Wiener (1935-2021) developed from an artist into a researcher out of sheer necessity. At the end of his life he emphasized:

"I do not aim at a synthesis of introspection and automata theory but rather at contrasting them. Which relationships identified in introspection can - in a fairly satisfactory way - be understood as realizations of relationships within a formal system, e.g., the formal system of automata theory. Or the other way around: How well does automata theory as a model (i.e., the computer as mental metaphor, 'Physical Symbol Systems,' today's Artificial Intelligence ...) capture essential features of human thought? What does 'in a fairly satisfactory way' mean in this context? What, and how strongly, does the formal system abstract from natural processes?"

In this book, three conversations with Wiener about the development of his theory and four essays introduce and elaborate on this new ap proach to the theory of thought, which has previously received too little attention in academic discourse. A pivotal role is played by Wiener's last major essay "Cybernetics and Ghosts."

"The collected essays in this book orbit around the mind of Oswald Wiener, becoming visible in his poignant text Cybernetics and Ghosts. The subtitle, in the no-man's-land between science and art adds an unnecessary caveat to Oswald Wiener's thoughts, because his thinking operates in a well-developed domain, just one that sadly resides in a parallel universe, one in which computer scientists are philosophers of mind, cybernetics did not die, and psychology did not end after Piaget.

• Artistic research in Wiener's (1935-2021) oeuvre
• Oswald Wiener's approach to cognitive psychology
• On the link between informatics and self-observation
• Also available in German Oswald Wieners Theorie des Denkens 978-3-11-065960-3

Wiener's perspective becomes very timely when it comes to the current, dismal discourse about Artificial Intelligence, which is largely taking place between philosophically illiterate engineers and scientifically illiterate humanities scholars. Where the engineers present their discoveries of practically useful algorithms and the scholars their practically useful political opinions, Wiener remains a true intellectual, sifting through the phenomenology of AI systems in an attempt to understand its significance for the unanswered questions of mind, meaning and the construction of reality."

Joscha Bach, Cognitive Scientist / AI Strategist at Liquid AI / Research Fellow at Thistledown Foundation, San Francisco Bay Area