Rationality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Stanislas Bigirimana

Aristotle pointed out to rationality as an outstanding characteristics of human beings. However, what is to be rational has been subjected to debate not only by opposing reason to emotion at individual level but also by also by restricting rationality to isolated individual minds associated with the vertebrate brain, mathematical calculation, logical inference and self-interested utility in modern Europe. These models of rationality led European slave traders and colonialists to doubt the rationality of non-European peoples. This paper argues that current research in Artificial Intelligence radicalizes models of rationality embedded in Newton’s mechanics (restricting reality to matter and/in motion) and Cartesian rationality (restricting knowing to thinking) and Galileo’s cosmology which restricting rationality to order, simplicity, regularity, hierarchy, proportion, symmetry, quantity, formal coherence, sequential processes (algorithms) and omit contributions of cognitive, behavioral and social sciences such as Robert Sternberg’s triarchic, Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence or Bernard Lonergan’s dynamic and integrative epistemology. This paper suggests a cybernetics models of the universe which in addition to mechanical aspects (matter in/and motion or hardware) adds a logical and symbolic aspects (software) and locates rationality at various levels of consciousness which emanate from the fact that human knowing comprises four integrated but differentiated processes of experiencing (pathos), understanding (logos), judging (choosing, deciding or ethos) and acting (praxis). However, a dynamic and integrative epistemology that bases itself on cybernetic rather than mechanical models implies that human knowing is an ongoing process of insight accumulation which involves integration of new data/experiences in existing explanatory frameworks. These explanatory frameworks emanate from genetic inheritance, childhood experiences and upbringing, learning through conscious training and rules and procedures of verification embedded in scientific institutions and bureaucracies or testing by various mechanical and electronic artifacts which can indicate the occurring and the degree of other phenomena given the fact that the designers and manufacturers of these instruments would have calibrated this function in the structure and he functioning of these artifacts. Hence, there is a possibility of complementing individual rationality with “institutional rationality”.

 Institutional rationality is based on the fact that “Our institutional environment, like our mental environment, surrounds us with a reliable and perceivable pattern of events. We do not have to understand the underlying causal mechanisms that produce these events, or the events themselves in all their detail, but only their pattern as it impinges on our life, on our needs and wants. The stabilities and predictabilities of our environment, social and natural, allow us to cope with the limits set by our knowledge and our computational capabilities” (Simon, 1983:78-9).