Attay Kremer

Research Project

Intellect and Information: A Genealogy of Logic

The fulcrum of my current project is the intersection of the history of philosophy and the philosophy of technology. Its decisive wager is that the emergence and formation of the notion of information, and the subsequent deformation of the notion of intellect, can only be properly brought into view by reference to the history of philosophy. Significant junctures include the resolution of the problem of induction by way of organistic reason and systematicity in Kant, Schelling and Hegel, the cybernetic reformation of the antinomy of teleology and mechanism, and Simondon’s informational notion of individuation. Comparing information theoreticians like Wiener, von Neumann and Solomonoff with, e.g., Hume and Kant’s views on induction shows affinities and contrasts between reflection (or intellect) and the operativity that defines cybernetic thinking (and contemporary AI). The key goal of this project is to better understand the notion of intelligence itself, by contrasting it with the notion of information. This goal is pursued on two fronts: both historically, by relating information and learning theory to the problem of induction, which drives much early modern philosophy, and philosophically, by relating those scientific approaches to the quality of experience that the classical philosophical approach puts in evidence. This second branch takes its cue from Husserl’s so-called “genealogy of logic” in his Erfahrung und Urteil.