After grading the final papers, the semester is finally over. This semester’s *Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology* was a brand-new course, and over the next two years it will probably be offered alternately with *A General History of Technology*. I’ll write a separate course summary a bit later.
For now, let me first gather together the comments I gave on the assignments. In fact, ever since I started teaching I’ve always insisted on giving students written feedback on their papers, but why did I want to post it this time? On the one hand, I wanted to blow my own horn a bit. Some students said that there really aren’t many teachers who give feedback like this, and that reminded me that this can also count as one of my course’s distinctive features. Good wine can still be hard to find if the alley is too deep; sharing it around may let more students know about the course. On the other hand, I also want to use this as a model for future teaching assistants. Right now my class is still small, so I can grade the assignments myself, but if the enrollment grows later, I’ll have to rely on TAs to help out. When that time comes, I’ll also require the TAs to give comments on each paper the way I do, so future TAs can refer to this record.
Of course, I don’t give comments on every paper. Something turned in too late may not necessarily get comments, and something that is obviously phoned in may not necessarily get them either.
I’ve removed the students’ personal information from these comments, but they still contain quite a lot of the criteria I use in grading and my ideal expectations. Future TAs can take a look for reference; other readers need not study them closely. I’m posting them here purely for archival purposes.
The feedback for each student is separated by “___”.
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How on earth is this thing related to my course? Our course is called Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology. Even if you had started off by saying that the marketplace can be counted as one kind of technology in the broad sense, that would at least be something. But you didn’t even make the connection; how can you hand this in as an assignment for my course? Where in this piece do you actually show anything you learned from the course, or anything related to the course readings? I’m afraid I can’t see it.
Also, even setting aside its relation to the course, this piece still can’t really count as a “paper.” In class I talked about the requirements for a high-school paper, an undergraduate paper, and a graduate paper. At the very least, we should meet the high-school standard, meaning that a paper should have an “argument, evidence, and reasoning.” What is your argument? What is the question you are focusing on? How do you reason it through? Without “argument,” how can this be called a paper?
In any sense, your paper does not meet the standard. Still, combining that with your course participation, I can barely give you a passing grade.
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Please note the requirements in the course announcement:
The original wording was: “You may also substitute two short papers of around 3,000 Chinese characters each. You may also substitute 10 essays of around 600 Chinese characters each.” … “If submitted in the form of multiple short pieces, they should be spaced out over time and not all written at the end of the semester.”
What you turned in is neither a short paper nor an essay; at least it is not 10 essays, and it was not submitted over time in a staggered way. One could say it does not meet my assignment requirements.
Why do I say there should be 10 essays? (In practice, some students submitted five or six essays, but they really did send them to me after each class, and I accepted that.) This is due to considerations of completeness of content. A “piece,” whether it is a paper or an essay, should be something relatively cohesive, dealing with one issue or telling one story. Only with targeted thinking and a clear aim can reflective ability be improved. So although I don’t restrict the subject matter for essays, I do restrict the length: one article of roughly 600 to 1,000 Chinese characters. No matter how wildly you roam, you can’t really scatter too far; consciously or unconsciously, you will still end up narrowing and focusing.
What you have here is actually all discussion and dialogue, with a corresponding context. But once it is separated from your context, the completeness and focus of your writing are very lacking.
Of course, you did post several times on the online classroom platform, and those can count as essays. Add this one to those, and I can let you pass and give you a barely adequate grade. But this assignment does not meet the requirements.
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This piece doesn’t resemble a paper; at most it is a reading note or some reflections. Before and after the discussion section I specifically talked about how to write a paper. First of all, we should meet the high-school standard, namely that a paper must have an argument, evidence, and reasoning.
First, a paper must have a focus, not a meandering conversation. The focus should be as clear and sharp as possible;
Second, it must have “evidence”; the more solid the evidence, the better. But you neither cited philosophical classics nor cited cutting-edge academic papers. You cited Baidu Baike several times…… This is not only a matter of writing ability, but also a matter of taste. How can Baidu Baike be used as a credible, authoritative source to support your paper? Even English Wikipedia would be better…… The way Baidu Baike is compiled makes it unsuitable as a source for serious academic writing; even if you just want to get a rough idea of the relevant knowledge, it’s best not to use it, so as to avoid being misled. For example, take a look at this article: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/54969466 . As for citations, for common-sense content, you can just say it in your own words and don’t need to cite it. For disputed content or material where you need to borrow authority, try as much as possible to track down a reliable original source;
Finally, there is “reasoning.” Reasoning should be the main issue in a paper, but in the first half of your piece the style is basically “telling a story” and “introducing” things, rather than reasoning. Reasoning should aim at a target, engage in sharp confrontation; introductions should also be critical commentary.
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First, I’m sorry that during the final-exam period everyone’s papers were basically turned in in the last two days, but I can’t possibly grade your paper exactly when you hand it in, so now that I’ve just finished reading it, there’s no time or need to revise it in detail. I’ll just make a few general comments:
First, the paper is quite good. You found a good book to review, and the writing is mostly fairly clear. What is lacking is mainly experience with the genre of the “paper.” First of all, in terms of form, the abstract should not be written as an introduction. The abstract is a condensation of the paper’s contents. For example, the conclusion of the first section should correspond to the first sentence of the abstract, and the argument of the second section should correspond to the second sentence of the abstract. The conclusive points should be concisely compressed into the abstract; don’t keep the reader guessing. Try to avoid using the word “this paper.” The abstract should state directly: “The theoretical foundation of Feenberg’s critical theory of technology is XXXXXX, its methodology is critical constructivism, he believes that the transformation of technological systems is a kind of Gestalt transformation, he believes that technological progress is achieved through struggle… Feenberg proposes the concept of the democratization of technology, opening up a completely new path for critical theory of technology.” After writing the abstract well, check in reverse whether the key points in the main text are clear, whether any important parts of the body are missing from the abstract, or whether important concepts in the abstract are not developed in the body.
As for content, your main task is “sorting things out.” On that level, you did well. But if we apply a higher standard for academic papers, “sorting things out” is only the bare minimum. And Feenberg is not some very obscure figure nobody has paid attention to; other people have studied him too, and there are introductions to his work as well. So there is little value in sorting him out all over again. A good academic paper needs an attitude of “argument,” for example, Wang Huaying has already done a “deep interpretation,” so is his interpretation on target? Accurate? Comprehensive? Deep enough? If his interpretation is already excellent, then your own interpretation isn’t very meaningful. So you need to identify where he did not interpret well, or where his reading is still incomplete, and then correct or supplement it; that is what reveals the value of your paper.
In addition, when dealing with philosophers, it is worth looking for disagreements. Where exactly does Feenberg’s distinctiveness lie? (Of course, you did mention it, but the presentation is not sharp enough; that is also due to the limits of your reading.)
A paper should be sharp rather than round. Rather than sorting things out in a comprehensive and perfectly balanced way, it is better to seize one point and dig deeply into it.
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The piece has a foundation in reading; besides the materials recommended in the course, you also independently searched for sources. All in all, it’s still not bad. The weakness is that the thesis is not distinct enough, and many parts are only common-sense explanation and paraphrase. For example, you mention that “as stated above, artificial intelligence based on computers as its carrier cannot produce its own independent consciousness or thought.” This is a very central issue, but your so-called “as stated above” merely paraphrases a short passage from Dreyfus. But Dreyfus’s view is, on the one hand, outdated in many respects, and on the other hand, even if what he says makes sense, this is your paper. You should critically cite his argument, making your own distinctions: where he speaks well, where he needs supplementing, where there are controversies, where he is already outdated, where he may be misunderstood by others, and so on. Only then can it count as your evidence. Citations serve your reasoning, but citation itself is not complete reasoning.
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The paper shows reading and thought; all in all, it’s good. The first flaw is that the breadth of reading is still not enough. Beyond the classic texts, you didn’t further search for literature according to the paper’s topic, and the selections in the reader are all relatively classic works—that is, literature that has no direct relation to the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Since you are focusing on this topic, it would be better to search for some more relevant literature based on the clues at hand.
Also, the author of the reader is Wu Guosheng, not Wu Guosheng [sic], and even the only reference is written incorrectly. That is a rather careless mistake.
As for format, in Chinese it is best not to use italics; quotation marks are enough for citations, and there is no need to change the font additionally. If you want to change the font, you can use Kai type or FangSong type to replace the effect of italics in English. Also, the ellipsis should be entered in Chinese input method by typing “^” (shift+6), not by typing six dots.
In terms of content, there is independent thought, but the reasoning does not seem strong enough. For example, you think the reason artificial intelligence cannot be compared with biological intelligence is that it lacks “drive.” On the one hand, what you call “drive” seems to mean “purpose,” so why not say directly that it lacks purpose? Or that it lacks intention? Because the word “drive” can easily be confused with the concept of a machine. Marx says machinery includes tools, transmission devices, and power machines (engines). If you are talking about tools on the one hand and drive on the other, it is easy to confuse this with the machine’s power source.
But in fact it seems you really do mean “engine,” because you say, “one cannot expect the tool machine to serve as its own drive, otherwise it becomes a perpetual motion machine.” How does perpetual motion enter into this? If it can be linked to perpetual motion, that means you are still talking about drive in the dynamical sense, aren’t you?
As for human purpose, it is layered. For example, in the same game of chess, the overall purpose is to win prize money, while the purpose under the specific rules is to occupy more squares by the end of the game, and at the stage level, the purpose of this move may be to occupy a corner, the purpose of that move may be to kill a dragon, and so on. Artificial intelligence is not necessarily unable to construct purposes for itself in a local sense; through learning, it may have learned rule-based or stage-based purposes. Such self-construction of purpose does not seem to violate the problem of the so-called perpetual motion machine. And in the ultimate sense of life purpose, many human beings have none either. That does not mean they are not intelligent.
In short, your concept of drive or purpose does not seem clear enough. And the second half seems to start all over again, discussing a different issue from the first half.
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I just finished reading your paper. Your paper is still very good, exactly the kind of writing I hope for: you apply what you have learned flexibly and dynamically, on the one hand reading classical philosophical texts, and on the other hand combining what you learned in class and applying it to more specific topics.
Because you turned it in relatively late, I won’t annotate it in great detail. My overall feeling is similar to your paper from last semester: there is a certain duality in its positioning. On the one hand it is written like an academic paper; on the other hand it is written like an essay or miscellaneous prose piece. Your paper also combines these two styles, but it doesn’t quite resemble either of them. Of course, that is actually your personal style, and I think there is no need to change it; by all means keep it up. At least write it like this first, and then revise it. But from a more practical point of view, if your paper is not merely for your own amusement or for the teacher’s reference, then you need to revise it according to the intended audience.
You can extend your paper simultaneously in different directions: one is the academic direction, in which case you should appropriately reduce colloquial expression, focus the topic more sharply, and openly present and critique the views of other scholars; the other is the popular-writing direction, in which case you should reduce abstruse philosophical interpretation, reduce citations, try to explain the issue in your own words as clearly as possible, and lay out your position so that readers who have not read the relevant philosophical works can still follow your article.
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Although it is not a paper, nor is it the roughly 10 short essays I asked for, so it is somewhat noncompliant, it is indeed work that shows independent thinking, reading, and ideas, and it is still quite good. I also appreciate your criticisms or suggestions regarding this course.
However, through your reading of this book, did you gain a “systematic understanding” of the philosophy of technology? If you did, why not use a systematic way to sketch out more comprehensively and holistically the answer to “what is the philosophy of technology”? But what you seem to have given is still a loose set of reading notes: you read a chapter and offer some thoughts, but where is the so-called “system”? If by system you merely mean that philosophy includes the three major fields of “metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology,” and that the division into these three fields is what makes a system, then that is obviously an overly superficial question. Quite apart from the fact that some philosophers do not accept this division (for example, the logical positivists you mention at the end believed that metaphysics should not be included within philosophy), even if you were committed to this threefold division, that would only be an understanding of “philosophy” in general, not of “the philosophy of technology.”
Notice that the author of the book also did not organize its contents according to this division. So is his book systematic? I did not look closely, but just from the table of contents it does not seem to have a particularly rigorous structure. For instance, why is there a chapter on “technology and religion,” but not one on “technology and art” or “technology and politics”?
In my view, “the philosophy of technology” simply does not have much of a system at all. “Heidegger’s philosophy” can have a system, “one of Hu Yilin’s works” can have a system, “a paper by Zhang San” can have a system…… because these are all built by the same person. A particular natural science can also have a system, because although many scientists, generation after generation, take part in its development, scientists can more easily reach consensus. The parts with the greatest consensus are compiled into textbooks, and that forms a disciplinary system. But the problem is that “the philosophy of technology” is very hard to make into a system, because it is neither something built in a single person’s consistent fashion over time, nor something for which broad consensus is easy to find. Rather than saying it is a completed system, it is better to say that “the philosophy of technology” is a “field of discourse,” a highly open platform. Around the name “the philosophy of technology,” countless scholars have carried out fierce, mutually contradictory debates. Some of these debates have relatively focused threads, and thus can be linked under the larger banner of “the philosophy of technology,” but at the same time these debates are irreconcilable, with each philosopher having his or her own set of views. So it is hard to say that there is any real system of the philosophy of technology.
So my Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology is not meant to introduce you to some ready-made completed structure, but rather to guide you into this open field of discourse. This open platform is not like a tightly ordered building, where you must enter through the main gate and go first to the first floor, then to the second, and so on. There are many ways to enter the field, and it is not necessary to say that there is some part you must pass through. So while both are called “guides,” some subjects are like a carefully arranged museum, while others are more like a noisy open-air market. The way of guiding people will therefore be very different. In the latter kind of guide, it is hard to tell you in strict sequence which stall you must see first and which stall you must see second, but it is still possible to point out some highlights and focal points in the market. That is the positioning of this course: to lead everyone to appreciate some interesting and emblematic things in this field.
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Your essay has its own reading and thinking, and it also draws on a good deal of foreign-language literature, which is worth encouraging. But the biggest problem is that it doesn’t really read like a paper; in both topic and style, it feels more like an essay than an academic article. When I talked with you, I already mentioned that the key problem in writing a paper is being able to let go. You have many ideas and you’ve read a lot, but a paper has to be focused. It is enough for one paper to make one point clearly. Casting too wide a net, but in the end not making any one point clear, is not good. Of course, you do in fact have a distinctive viewpoint—for example, using the 2×2 conceptual framework of rationality/humanity—thought/action to understand different theories of artificial intelligence. If your whole paper were to make that one point clear, that would already be enough. Of course, it should be developed more concretely, for example: who are the representative figures of these “four major schools”? What common ground and disputes exist among them? Have other scholars divided the schools in different ways? Where does your fourfold classification have an advantage over other scholars’ approaches? … If you concentrate on explaining just this one point, then once the paper is published, it can establish a benchmark in the academic world. Later, when other scholars discuss the issue of schools of artificial intelligence, whether they agree with your classification or not, they may have to cite your paper. That is the kind of paper that has force and contribution. A good paper should have such self-conscious awareness: whose shoulders am I standing on? Whom do I want to critique? What new thing can I establish? Of course, for an undergraduate general-education course paper, the standards need not be as exacting as for an academic paper; but since I am giving feedback, I still want to tell you the ideal standard: focus is better than diffusion, and a sharp point of view is better than trying to please both sides.
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(Because it was submitted early, the feedback is given in the form of inline comments)
Title—you do in fact talk about the reconstruction of a paradigm, but it seems the main text hardly says anything about “the transformation of identity.”
——Overall, the article is good. It uses the reading materials (though in some places rather forcibly), and it also contains your own thinking. But my comments are mainly critical, so please take them only as reference.
“Rational—deductive” cognitive paradigm——It seems there has never been such a cognitive paradigm. In philosophy of science people often speak of the “inductive—deductive” model, but even that model has long since been abandoned by the academic world. Thomas Kuhn’s theory, which introduced the word “paradigm,” had already overturned the “inductive—deductive” understanding long ago.
——In academic papers, try to use as few statement-like declarations as possible. Abstracts should be especially concise; every sentence should correspond to a paragraph in the main text. For example, if the abstract says “discarding fixed prejudices,” then the main text should show exactly what prejudices there are. But the word “prejudices” appears only in the abstract and nowhere else in the main text, which shows that your abstract is not well written.
——The style of Plato’s dialogues is often that two people debate one another, putting forward one idea after another and then refuting it. This so-called JTB definition is not Plato’s final answer, which he affirmed, but only one of the arguments. At most one can say that it is a definition mentioned by Plato in the Theaetetus, not that it is the answer he gives.
——It should be said that this is indeed a requirement in the field of mathematics, whereas for general empirical knowledge, confirmation of course requires empirical observation, especially planned “experiments”; the demand for “experiments” is what is new since the Enlightenment. As for mathematics alone, it seems that from Euclid to Descartes, in even earlier times, there already existed a demand for pure reason, so it is not easy to say that this was added only after the Enlightenment.
——Are the transmission methods between traditional Go masters and apprentices really “deductive interpretation”? Also, what do you mean by utterly unreadable data? Can’t we obtain game records from AlphaGo? Practical training and massive game records—these two things are precisely the main training methods in traditional Go apprenticeship, and both of them can be obtained from AlphaGo. Where is the difference? Is the difference that there are some meaningless extra parameters? But the problem is that, traditionally, apprentices couldn’t even obtain the parameters inside the master’s brain at all. What can be obtained in the traditional setting, AlphaGo can give you too; it just adds some elaborate data in domains that traditionally could not be obtained at all.
——If you don’t accept input, how can that mean you don’t grasp experience? The sun does not accept human input, but can human beings grasp the experience related to the sun’s movement?
——Speaking of the crown of all beings, why not consider human beings’ cognition of animals? For instance, a donkey can be an effective “tool,” helping people grind grain and transport goods, but have we produced a so-called deductive explanation of the donkey’s actions? If not, have our cognitive paradigm and our so-called confidence already collapsed long ago? Of course, the issue here is that artificial intelligence, as machines, now seem to have become as unfathomable as autonomous life-forms; this is indeed shocking. But before artificial intelligence, these unfathomable things were already overflowing in the human cognitive world. The human cognitive world was never sustained solely by deduction.
——Where are you counting these several hundred years from? Descartes? But modern rationalism, from the beginning, had empiricism opposing it; later there was Kant’s synthesis, the rise of idealism, the overturning by Marxism, and so on. So-called rationalism never had any solid, impregnable stronghold. What you probably mean is some small faction within contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, but I remain skeptical. This “rationalism” seems to be just a target you have invented; it never truly became dominant.
——In your “experience—induction—theory,” deduction has nothing to do with it at all… Generally speaking, this kind of model can be called an “inductive—deductive” model: from experience to theory is induction, and from theory to prediction is deduction. Deduction is only the latter half of the “inductive—deductive” paradigm, but the work in the first half is itself technical in nature.
——Which existing tools are no longer effective?
Did the industrial assembly line liberate workers—really?
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Your essay passes, but it obviously cannot get a high score. First, you did not take on the challenge of writing at a high level; second, in the essay form, most of it is basically notes on the reading, while your own thinking and your reflections on my lectures are insufficient—of course, it can be seen that you attended class and did some reading, but your writing lacks a dialogical and critical dimension; it merely repeats things obediently, and rarely raises challenging questions.
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(in comment mode, submitted earlier, and then submitted again after revisions)
——Generally speaking, if the main title is a bit poetic or metaphorical, then one should add a precise and rigorous subtitle as a supplement. But here it is the subtitle that is less clear. Note that academic papers are not written like books or other literary works; the aim should be rigor and clarity. Of course, the ambiguity of the title is also due to the lack of focus in your article’s argument.
——The abstract should not be written as an introduction. An abstract is a condensation of the main text; every sentence in the abstract should have a corresponding paragraph in the main text, and it should not leave things hanging, either. For example, a sentence like “the characteristics, emergence, and purpose of the giant machine will be discussed…” is not the right kind of wording. You should say directly: “The giant machine has the following characteristics one, two, three; its purpose is XXX.”
——Mumford should have first proposed this concept in an article from 1966. In “Technology and Human Nature” he is only continuing it, not introducing it.
——Try to use direct quotations as much as possible. For indirect quotations, make sure the context makes it easy to tell which sentences are borrowed from which source. I noticed that the few sentences before this should be direct quotations; direct quotations must be placed in quotation marks or set off in a separate paragraph in a different font, otherwise it risks plagiarism. Only when you are not excerpting the original wording but reorganizing it in your own language can you use indirect quotation.
——This paragraph seems to equate the “giant machine” with the “state.” That concept needs more distinction. Such an equation can certainly be argued for, but it is obviously not Mumford’s original meaning. The state can be organized in different ways; the giant machine is one, but is it possible to build a state organically? Were the states imagined by Locke or Rousseau also giant machines? If you expand the issue here into a proposition such as “Can the state be something other than a giant machine?”, you might write a paper with a more clearly defined argument.
——Academic papers should avoid a “statement” style of language as much as possible. Every “ought” should be sufficiently argued; otherwise, it should not be said so often. The subject of your “ought” is very vague: “society” ought to—what is society? Is society a subject? Does society have free will? When you say these things, it seems as if you are speaking to some supreme dictator or even an otherworldly controller beyond the world, but if you think carefully, you will find that all of this is very empty. Academic research should not always worry about being a “state counselor”; one paper only needs to make a few points clear.
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The article has reading, has thinking, and can combine the ideas of Heidegger and other classic philosophers introduced in class to understand Harari’s new concepts, which is very good. The shortcoming is that the focus and coherence of the argument are still somewhat lacking. For example, earlier you mention that “…through some kind of technology we study an object, yet in the end we fail to distinguish between the essence of the object itself and the essence of the object as studied through technology; I will elaborate this criticism in detail later.” But “later,” you never seem to mention this difference in the essence of the object again, or rather, you only touch on it a little when discussing physics. Another example: at the end, you say, “what this article criticizes is not dataism in the narrow sense,” but if one goes back to your earlier text, there does not seem to be any clear distinction between what narrow and broad dataism mean respectively. Good argumentation should be tightly interlocked and mutually echoing from beginning to end; your article seems a bit scattered.
In terms of details, when you write “in reference [11], the author…,” in such places you should generously put the author’s name and background into the main text itself, for example: Zhang San in the article XXX proposed… A paper should engage in dialogue with other scholars, borrowing their views and criticizing their errors and omissions. For example, does Harari’s dataism have any problems—does it fail to explain things clearly, or fail to distinguish between broad and narrow senses, or are Zhang San and Li Si accurate in their interpretation of Harari’s claims? You can all these criticisms directly in the main text. A paper is dialogue; there is no need to hide it.
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Combining philosophy of technology with your own legal specialty to think things through is very good. But as a paper, it still has some shortcomings. First, even the title does not look like a paper: “A Few Thoughts” sounds like an essay, and an essay written by a big-name figure at that. Academic papers should strive for focus as much as possible; one would rather be sharp and in-depth than cover everything superficially. Explaining one issue thoroughly is better than briefly skimming over ten issues. The abstract should not be written as an introduction. An abstract is a distillation of the content of the paper, for example: the conclusion of the first section corresponds to the first sentence in the abstract, and the argument of the second section corresponds to the second sentence in the abstract. Conclusions should be concisely compressed into the abstract; do not leave things hanging, and try not to use the word “this paper.”
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This paper is good. One can see the gains from attending class, reading outside the classroom, and independent thinking, and you were able to integrate resources from multiple sources while maintaining a critical stance; all of this can help the paper receive a high score. Of course, I still always have to pick out a few flaws to comment on.
First, although you read a lot, you still did not dig deeply enough. Professor Wu, although in this lecture he mentioned only bodily techniques and objectified techniques as the two levels, has also discussed social techniques and spiritual techniques in other settings. This is precisely Mumford’s fourfold division. In Professor Wu’s paper “Mumford’s Philosophy of Technology” (Peking University Journal), he explicitly says: “Mental techniques, bodily techniques, and social techniques precede natural techniques, not the other way around.” This shows that what you call “spiritual technique” is not something new; Mumford or Professor Wu have already mentioned it. A lecture transcript, after all, is a reworking of a speech and is rather context-dependent; it is not so rigorous.
Next, your definition of “reflection as technique” is not deep enough. You seem to be emphasizing only the importance of “reflection,” rather than the importance of “reflection as technique.” For example, you think that “modern technology suppresses reflection on life, but humanity has not completely lost the capacity to shape its own spirit through spiritual techniques; the possibility of reflection still exists.” If we change “spiritual technique” in such sentences into “spiritual capacity” or “spiritual activity,” what difference does the meaning really have?
Since you chose this topic, the center of your discussion should not be “why reflection matters,” but rather: in what way is treating reflection as “technique” deeper and more insightful than the way ordinary people understand “reflection”? On this point, you have not dug deeply enough.
Since you say reflection is a kind of technique, then we should reverse the question and think about what technique actually is. Why can the characteristics that we generally think “technique” has also be characteristics of reflection? For example, teachability, imitatability, reproducibility. “Externality” is a feature of “technique”; then, conversely, are mental or spiritual activities always some completely internal activity? From a certain philosophy-of-technology perspective—for example, from Stiegler’s perspective—things such as “memory,” traditionally thought to belong purely to the “inner life,” have had their externality uncovered by Stiegler. Memory can also be objectified, or rather must necessarily go through a dimension of objectification and exteriorization before returning. Such thinking refreshes ordinary people’s understanding of “memory.” So can your “reflection as technique” likewise refresh people’s ordinary understanding of “reflection”?
Moreover, technique comes in many forms. Just as there are differences between ancient and modern forms of objectified technique, does reflection as technique also have differences between ancient and modern times? Your discussion seems only to be saying that reflection has declined and should still be continued, but the question is whether reflection is not so much declining as transforming. For example, Marcuse’s critique of technological rationality—modern people are not without rationality, but are “too” rational; they do not fail to think, but only know how to think according to the logic of technology. Then might “reflection” also have different types and tendencies? Might the “self” that is likewise constructed in reflection also become very different because the “technique” is different?
In short, your topic should not be confined to the superficial goal of “promoting reflection,” but should dig more deeply and more precisely into what reflection as “technique” actually means.
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The paper has its own thinking and can combine philosophy of science and technological issues. Overall, it is not bad. But the main problem is that the topic is not concentrated. In fact, the whole text has two questions: one is “Will technology completely replace human beings?” and the other is “What exactly is the Turing test?” There is a great deal that could be said around either of these questions, but they do not seem to have been integrated in the article. If these two major questions are integrated, then in the latter part you should also return again and again to the original question—the question of technology replacing human beings. For example, even if computers do not pass the Turing test, does that mean they will not replace human beings? Or if computers eventually pass a very strict Turing test, does that necessarily mean they will replace human beings? Yet in the final section you almost entirely stop caring about the question of technology replacing people. So perhaps you should change the title of your paper and discuss only the Turing test, and even then narrow the scope further, something like “The problem of determining the Turing test from the perspective of falsificationism.” Focus precisely and dissect one clear problem thoroughly.
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Your essay is very well written; it shows independent thinking and genuine feeling, and it also reflects the gains of attending class and reading. However, my course requirements did actually state that “if you submit in the form of multiple short pieces, they should be submitted over time and not all saved until the end of the term.” That means it would have been best if you had written one essay every one or two classes and sent it to me right away, so that I could offer suggestions in class. Ideally, you could also have posted a few pieces on the online course forum, so that we could exchange ideas at any time. So now that you have turned everything in all at once, that is a little less in line with the requirements, and here I can only deduct a bit of points as appropriate. If you had posted a few times, or communicated more before and after class, you should have received an excellent grade. As it is now, I can only give a good grade. This grading principle is also meant to encourage everyone not only to read more and think more diligently, but also to communicate more. Philosophers are not all shut-away bookworms in ivory towers; enthusiasm and openness are the typical temperament of philosophers. Studying philosophy is not about working behind closed doors, but about reading more and speaking more. I hope you will share more of your own thoughts and insights, and of course you are also welcome to recommend this course to others~
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The abstract should not be written as an introduction. An abstract is a condensation of the content of the paper, for example: the conclusion of the first section corresponds to the first sentence in the abstract, and the argument of the second section corresponds to the second sentence in the abstract. The conclusive material should be briefly compressed into the abstract; do not leave things hanging, and absolutely do not use questions.
Taking “container” as the thread, you link Mumford, Heidegger, Marx, and Marcuse together; there is thinking, there is creativity, and you are able to critically evaluate Mumford, which is also good. But the criticism does not seem quite on target. You think that Mumford was criticizing the opposition between humanity and nature and promoting some kind of natural technology, but that is not really the case. What Mumford promotes is “organic technology”; he opposes organic technology to inorganic technology, and does not mean that organic technology is a technology that follows nature. In fact, what counts as nature also includes both organic and inorganic things: inorganic things are natural, and organic things are natural too. Following your line of thought, entropy decrease and entropy increase are both natural. The “natural tendency” of a puddle of water is to spread out, but what is the “natural tendency” of a worm? It does not spread out immediately; it grows and moves.
What Mumford calls “organic” refers to this self-organizing, entropy-decreasing aspect. Nature has both an inorganic side (a drop of water spreading out) and an organic side (grass, trees, fish, and insects growing in water). Correspondingly, technology also has an inorganic side (attack, destruction) and an organic side (containers, cities, social organization). What Mumford emphasizes is the opposition between organic and inorganic, not the opposition between following nature and going against nature. Of course Mumford can still be criticized, but you do not seem to have hit the point.
There is reading and thinking here, and critical argumentation as well; that is fairly good. But the argument is still not forceful enough. First of all, the thesis is not clear and the topic is not distinctive. According to the assignment prompt, the focus of the essay should be the question of the rationality of technological progress, viewed from Marcuse’s perspective. Then you should center your discussion on technological progress: for example, who thinks technological progress is irrational, who thinks it is rational, and what exactly does this rationality mean? What is distinctive about looking at it from Marcuse’s perspective, and how do other perspectives see it? … But in fact, only the very last paragraph of your entire essay talks about the rationality of technological progress, and it is somewhat disconnected from the earlier argument.
Your criticism of Marcuse also does not quite hit the point. You should find Marcuse’s own words, take them out, and criticize those, so that you have a target. But what you criticize does not seem to be Marcuse’s own meaning. For example, you mention that “…does not mean that we need to negate everything.” But obviously, was Marcuse saying that we need to negate everything? I specifically emphasized in class: “saying no” ≠ critique. Marcuse’s so-called negative dimension is not simply saying no to anything and everything, but stepping outside it and criticizing from a transcendent dimension. The “standard of measurement” you speak of is in fact this transcendent dimension; what Marcuse is saying is precisely that we should “negate” this very “standard for measuring affirmation and negation” itself. I especially emphasized that Marcuse’s negation is a negation directed at the “totality.” Of course Marcuse can still be criticized, but your criticism does not hit the point because you have not first grasped Marcuse’s original meaning clearly.
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I won’t add comments to the essay form itself. Here I will try to answer the two questions you raised.
1. In what way are the defects brought about by machines organized by people (it should be “a machine made up of people”) manifested?
I think there is no need to interpret this too profoundly. The defects of this kind of social machine are very obvious. For example, concentrating a huge amount of labor to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu is completely useless for people’s actual lives; it is pure waste, and it also intensifies internal social contradictions. But at the same time, this kind of system that organizes people to build pyramids can also play an excellent role in “flood control, crop production, urban construction, and so on,” and thus a compensation is formed—although it is wasteful in building pyramids, it yields gains in flood prevention.
2. Why do repeated religious rituals and similar activities make people adapt to repetitive work?
Why do you think it is “fear”? Look at ethnic minority groups singing and dancing, look at Black people singing and drumming, Native Americans jumping around, and think again of Chinese people setting off firecrackers, racing dragon boats, and going to temple fairs… would you actually think the emotion dominating them is fear? What are ritual activities? There is still a little vestige of them in the traditions of modern people during festivals—do you really think ancient people set off firecrackers because they feared the so-called “Nian beast”? This is all because modern secular atheists cannot understand the intellectual world of ancient people, and can only interpret it through a blunt notion of fear, which of course does not fit the facts.
The repetitive work of twisting yangge dances, doing square dancing, and the like is closer to ritual activities. These tasks are obviously repetitive and tiring, yet the older ladies do them with tireless enthusiasm. But they need to find some meaning in such activities—for example, in ancient times it was sacrifice and worship of the gods, whereas modern people may say it is “exercise.”
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This assignment does not meet the requirements of a “paper.” You might want to look again at the section on papers in the last few slides of my “6马克思.pptx.” First of all, at minimum by high school standards, a paper should have “a thesis, evidence, and argumentation,” and your thesis is not very distinctive; it seems more like reading notes. Also, I specifically pointed out the ctrl+alt+F shortcut and said that you should use Word’s built-in footnote function for citations, but your formatting is also very messy, with many inexplicable line breaks in the middle. You should spend some time learning how to operate word-processing software; this should not be too difficult, and I hope you will explore and practice more.
This assignment can be lowered in standards and counted as an “essay,” but as an essay, the content is still very awkward. I do not know whether you had any intentional or unintentional plagiarism or copying behavior, (I have not checked carefully yet; if I find it, it will definitely be zero), but if there is no plagiarism, then every sentence not marked with a source should be something you wrote yourself. In that case, many of the things you say sound very strange, and do not sound like something a first-year undergraduate would say; sometimes the surrounding context is not even coherent. For example, the following two sentences:
“But as long as we still do not understand the difference between technology and art, nor the fundamental relationship between technology and art. Heidegger places the fundamental meditation and decisive analysis of technology in the realm of art, because he believes that on the one hand art is intrinsically related to the essence of technology, while on the other hand it is fundamentally different from the essence of technology.”
—There is no “then” after this “as long as.” “Fundamental meditation and decisive analysis” also sounds like something borrowed from elsewhere.
Your title says “Interpretation of ?The Question Concerning Technology? and personal reflections,” but in the actual writing these two parts are not clearly distinguished. Which parts are interpretation, and which are extended reflections? It is not clear.
Given your current accumulation and ability, interpreting The Question Concerning Technology is not an appropriate task. You might as well do more vivid, personal thinking instead of pretending to tackle difficult problems. Your assignment is low-scoring as it stands. You also did not come to discussion class (or did not speak), and you did not speak online either, so your total score will be very low. If you want to make up for it, you can still submit an assignment before the end of the term. (You may send it by email.)
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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