My Dinner With Android is the site of Tom Sgouros’ performance “Judy -or- What Is It Like To Be A Robot?”. This excellent performance raises questions about artificial intelligence and consciousness. I loved how the script of the performance became part of the issue.
Bear with me, a script about theory.
I went to see a performance last night of “Judy or What it Like To Be A Robot” by Tom Sgouros. This is a performance around questions of artificial intelligence, consciousness and scripting machines or performances. (http://www.sgouros.com/)
Today I asked one of my philosophy colleagues if that performance was itself a work of philosophy to which he replied that it was not. He said it was “philosophically informed” the way a movie like the Matrix is.
When pushed on this he asserted that the performance did not make assertions that could be assessed the way philosophical assertions can. In other words it did not present a theory, where a theory would be a coherent set of general assertions about some subject. Instead the actors (Tom and Judy) performed characters who made assertions (among other things.)
I then pointed out that the word “theory” comes from the Greek to “view” and shares a common root with “theatre” which suggests that theories are works that stand-back in some fashion in order to present a particular type of view on the subject theorized.
To this he replied that etymology isn’t definition – it doesn’t mean that is how we use the word today. This raised the question of whether a philosophical dialogue is a “work of philosophy” capable of presenting theory or whether philosophers like Wittgenstein can be said to present theories when they appear to be resisting theorizing (or trying to cure us of the temptation).
The relevance of this story is that we need to expand the question to look not only at theory but the practices associated with theory. What does it mean to theorize? How do we do it? How do we exchange theories? Is all theory performed, even if the performance is a reading?
Humanities computing brings a new set of practices to the mix. Developing a computer model of a subject of inquiry is a form of applied theorizing. It is a method or practice that humanities computing is introducing into the humanities whereby we try to formally describe in code a subject so that the computer can perform the theory as a way of testing it. Again, this is a stepping-back-to-view akin to stepping back from writing theory.
The question I ask myself is whether there are inherent constraints to theories modeled as code for automata that limit what can be theorized through computing? We should ask Judy.