Key Arguments

• Dreyfus quotes N. S. Sutherland’s claim that 'Survival and self maintenance are achieved by genetically building into the human brain a series of drives or goals. Some of the obvious ones are hunger, thirst, the sexual drive and avoidance of pain. All of these drives are parochial in the sense that one could imagine complex information processing systems exhibiting intelligent behavior but totally lacking them.'
• He rejects this, asserting: 'We have seen, however, that our concrete bodily needs directly or indirectly give us our sense of the task at hand, in terms of which our experience is structured as significant or insignificant.'
• He says these needs 'have a very special structure, which, while more specific than Heidegger's account, does resemble artistic creation.'
• He describes the phenomenology: 'When we experience a need we do not at first know what it is we need. We must search to discover what allays our restlessness or discomfort.'
• He emphasizes that this is not solved by comparison against a determinate criterion: 'This is not found by comparing various objects and activities with some objective, determinate criterion, but through what Todes calls our sense of gratification.'
• This gratification is 'experienced as the discovery of what we needed all along, but it is a retroactive understanding and covers up the fact that we were unable to make our need determinate without first receiving that gratification.'
• He concludes: 'The original fulfillment of any need is, therefore, what Todes calls a creative discovery. 9*'
• He generalizes: 'Thus human beings do not begin with a genetic table of needs or values which they reveal to themselves as they go along. Nor, when they are authentic, do they arbitrarily adopt values which are imposed by their environment.'

Source Quotes

S. Sutherland, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex, in an article "Machines and Men," writes: Survival and self maintenance are achieved by genetically building into the human brain a series of drives or goals. Some of the obvious ones are hunger, thirst, the sexual drive and avoidance of pain. All of these drives are parochial in the sense that one could imagine complex information processing systems exhibiting intelligent behavior but totally lacking them.8 We have seen, however, that our concrete bodily needs directly or indirectly give us our sense of the task at hand, in terms of which our experience is structured as significant or insignificant.

Some of the obvious ones are hunger, thirst, the sexual drive and avoidance of pain. All of these drives are parochial in the sense that one could imagine complex information processing systems exhibiting intelligent behavior but totally lacking them.8 We have seen, however, that our concrete bodily needs directly or indirectly give us our sense of the task at hand, in terms of which our experience is structured as significant or insignificant. These needs have a very special structure, which, while more specific than Heidegger's account, does resemble artistic creation.

These needs have a very special structure, which, while more specific than Heidegger's account, does resemble artistic creation. When we experience a need we do not at first know what it is we need. We must search to discover what allays our restlessness or discomfort. This is not found by comparing various objects and activities with some objective, determinate criterion, but through what Todes calls our sense of gratification.

We must search to discover what allays our restlessness or discomfort. This is not found by comparing various objects and activities with some objective, determinate criterion, but through what Todes calls our sense of gratification. This gratification is experienced as the discovery of what we needed all along, but it is a retroactive understanding and covers up the fact that we were unable to make our need determinate without first receiving that gratification.

This is not found by comparing various objects and activities with some objective, determinate criterion, but through what Todes calls our sense of gratification. This gratification is experienced as the discovery of what we needed all along, but it is a retroactive understanding and covers up the fact that we were unable to make our need determinate without first receiving that gratification. The original fulfillment of any need is, therefore, what Todes calls a creative discovery.

This gratification is experienced as the discovery of what we needed all along, but it is a retroactive understanding and covers up the fact that we were unable to make our need determinate without first receiving that gratification. The original fulfillment of any need is, therefore, what Todes calls a creative discovery. 9* Thus human beings do not begin with a genetic table of needs or values which they reveal to themselves as they go along.

The original fulfillment of any need is, therefore, what Todes calls a creative discovery. 9* Thus human beings do not begin with a genetic table of needs or values which they reveal to themselves as they go along. Nor, when they are authentic, do they arbitrarily adopt values which are imposed by their environment.

Key Concepts

• Survival and self maintenance are achieved by genetically building into the human brain a series of drives or goals. Some of the obvious ones are hunger, thirst, the sexual drive and avoidance of pain.
• All of these drives are parochial in the sense that one could imagine complex information processing systems exhibiting intelligent behavior but totally lacking them.
• our concrete bodily needs directly or indirectly give us our sense of the task at hand, in terms of which our experience is structured as significant or insignificant.
• When we experience a need we do not at first know what it is we need. We must search to discover what allays our restlessness or discomfort.
• This is not found by comparing various objects and activities with some objective, determinate criterion, but through what Todes calls our sense of gratification.
• This gratification is experienced as the discovery of what we needed all along, but it is a retroactive understanding and covers up the fact that we were unable to make our need determinate without first receiving that gratification.
• The original fulfillment of any need is, therefore, what Todes calls a creative discovery.
• Thus human beings do not begin with a genetic table of needs or values which they reveal to themselves as they go along.

Context

In response to Sutherland’s suggestion that drives are dispensable for intelligence, Dreyfus, drawing on Samuel Todes, offers a phenomenological account of bodily needs and their creative, retroactive specification through gratification.