Mirror of Man

Tree: Tree actors can be put in a Hierarchy with parents and children. The tree pawns maintain their own hierarchy that mirrors the actor hierarchy.

"Neigungswinkel des Spiegels" z#1957

Part II: "In the Mirror Cabinet of the Computer" first analyzes anthropomorphizations in the two sciences cybernetics and artificial intelligence. The focus here is on the computer metaphor: the computer as a mirror of man - man in the mirror of the computer.

The search for the historical conditions of the possibility of the computer metaphor raises the question of the 'angle of inclination' of this mirror relationship, of the (intellectual-) historical course settings that constellate man and computer to each other in the way described. (Tietel 1995: 6)

In addition, and I will elaborate this thought in the chapter "Aspects of the Angle of Inclination of the Mirror", a technology came into the world with the computer, which in a more radical way than all previous technologies is suited to hold up a mirror to the human being. {Tietel 1995 #24367D: 62}

The question about aspects of the angle of inclination of the mirror, the question also about a possible historical apriori of the computer metaphor, refers to the beginning of modern times in the history of ideas. I want to ask the question at least whether the possibility as well as the way in which people today recognize themselves in the computer, as well as the Fear of being overtaken by this self-produced machine double, do not have their historical starting point and their reference point in the justification and determination of the modern subject as described by Descartes and Kant. {Tietel 1995 #24367D: 188}

Thus, the determination of the anthropomorph is not primarily about a general anthropological determination of the human being, a view that, as was evident in the chapter on the "Inclination of the Mirror," only became established since Kant's time; rather, it is about ways of the historical self-representation of the respective historical and social human being. {Tietel 1995 #24367D: 285} If one places the computer in the tradition of occidental philosophy, as I already did in the chapter on the "Inclination Angle of the Mirror", then one can say that the project of logification and mathematization of the world is completed with the advent of a logical machine; only now does the technical logos really become a logical technology: the Computer. {Tietel 1995 #24367D: 297}

~

[2295] Tietel E (1995): Das Zwischending: Die Anthropomorphisierung und Personifizierung des Computers: Zugl.: Bremen, Univ., Diss., 1995. Regensburg: S. Roderer