Key Arguments

• Building on his claim about human malleability, Dreyfus warns that 'Man's nature is indeed so malleable that it may be on the point of changing again. If the computer paradigm becomes so strong that people begin to think of themselves as digital devices on the model of work in artificial intelligence, then, since for the reasons we have been rehearsing, machines cannot be like human beings, human beings may become progressively like machines.'
• He notes that over 'the past two thousand years' certain assumptions have gained influence: 'the importance of objectivity; the belief that actions are governed by fixed values; the notion that skills can be formalized; and in general that one can have a theory of practical activity,' indicating a long trend toward treating practice as theoretically formalizable.
• These trends 'have gradually exerted their influence in psychology and in social science. People have begun to think of themselves as objects able to fit into the inflexible calculations of disembodied machines,' so that the self is reconceived in machine‑like, objectified terms.
• He contrasts the machine’s requirement that 'the human form-of-life must be analyzed into meaningless facts' with the phenomenological view of 'a field of concern organized by sensory-motor skills', suggesting that adopting the machine’s ontology entails abandoning the embodied, concernful structure of human experience.
• Thus the danger he identifies is not just technological but existential and cultural: the computer paradigm may reshape human self‑understanding and practice to match what the machine can handle, rather than revealing machines as inadequate to human being.

Source Quotes

These cultural revolutions show us, as Pascal first pointed out, that there is no sharp boundary between nature and cultureeven instinctual needs can be modified and overridden in terms of paradigmsthus there is no fixed nature of man. Man's nature is indeed so malleable that it may be on the point of changing again. If the computer paradigm becomes so strong that people begin to think of themselves as digital devices on the model of work in artificial intelligence, then, since for the reasons we have been rehearsing, machines cannot be like human beings, human beings may become progressively like machines.

Man's nature is indeed so malleable that it may be on the point of changing again. If the computer paradigm becomes so strong that people begin to think of themselves as digital devices on the model of work in artificial intelligence, then, since for the reasons we have been rehearsing, machines cannot be like human beings, human beings may become progressively like machines. During the past two thousand years the importance of objectivity; the belief that actions are governed by fixed values; the notion that skills can be formalized; and in general that one can have a theory of practical activity, have gradually exerted their influence in psychology and in social science.

If the computer paradigm becomes so strong that people begin to think of themselves as digital devices on the model of work in artificial intelligence, then, since for the reasons we have been rehearsing, machines cannot be like human beings, human beings may become progressively like machines. During the past two thousand years the importance of objectivity; the belief that actions are governed by fixed values; the notion that skills can be formalized; and in general that one can have a theory of practical activity, have gradually exerted their influence in psychology and in social science. People have begun to think of themselves as objects able to fit into the inflexible calculations of disembodied machines: machines for which the human form-of-life must be analyzed into meaningless facts, rather than a field of concern organized by sensory-motor skills.

During the past two thousand years the importance of objectivity; the belief that actions are governed by fixed values; the notion that skills can be formalized; and in general that one can have a theory of practical activity, have gradually exerted their influence in psychology and in social science. People have begun to think of themselves as objects able to fit into the inflexible calculations of disembodied machines: machines for which the human form-of-life must be analyzed into meaningless facts, rather than a field of concern organized by sensory-motor skills. Our risk is not the advent of

People have begun to think of themselves as objects able to fit into the inflexible calculations of disembodied machines: machines for which the human form-of-life must be analyzed into meaningless facts, rather than a field of concern organized by sensory-motor skills. Our risk is not the advent of

Key Concepts

• Man's nature is indeed so malleable that it may be on the point of changing again.
• If the computer paradigm becomes so strong that people begin to think of themselves as digital devices on the model of work in artificial intelligence, then, since for the reasons we have been rehearsing, machines cannot be like human beings, human beings may become progressively like machines.
• During the past two thousand years the importance of objectivity; the belief that actions are governed by fixed values; the notion that skills can be formalized; and in general that one can have a theory of practical activity, have gradually exerted their influence in psychology and in social science.
• People have begun to think of themselves as objects able to fit into the inflexible calculations of disembodied machines: machines for which the human form-of-life must be analyzed into meaningless facts, rather than a field of concern organized by sensory-motor skills.
• Our risk is not the advent of

Context

At the close of 'The Situation as a Function of Human Needs', Dreyfus extrapolates from his phenomenological critique and historical analysis to a cultural warning: the rising computer paradigm may not yield human-like machines, but instead machine-like humans who conceive of themselves in AI’s objectifying, formalistic terms.