Shop Class as Soulcraft_ An Inquiry Into the Value of Work - Matthew B. Crawford [69]
In John Searle’s famous critique of artificial intelligence, he asks us to imagine a man locked in a room, with only a slit in the door connecting him to the outside word.19 Through the door come pieces of paper with Chinese writing on them. The man does not know any Chinese. Unbeknownst to him, the writing takes the form of questions. He is equipped with a set of instructions, in English, for matching other Chinese symbols to the ones he is given. He passes these back through the slit, and they are taken to be answers to the questions. Searle’s point is that to perform this task, the man needn’t know any Chinese, and neither does a computer that does the same task as he. Some enthusiasts of artificial intelligence insist that the system knows Chinese—somehow there is thinking without a thinker. But a less mystical position would leave it at saying that it is the human programmer, who wrote up the instructions for matching Chinese answers to Chinese questions, who knows Chinese.
The mechanic relying on computerized diagnostics finds himself in a position similar to that of the man in the Chinese Room. The crucial stipulation in the thought experiment is that one could indeed have a set of rules that is fully adequate for matching answers to questions, without any reference to the meaning of the words being trafficked in. Whether this is in fact possible is a deep question in linguistics and philosophy of mind, and there is no noncontroversial answer to it. Yet the thoughtless way in which work is often conceived seems to presume the stipulation is correct. We view human beings as inferior versions of computers.
In Tommy’s use of the test procedure on the Kawasaki, he tried to follow a set of rules, but in fact had to actively interpret a meter that wouldn’t settle down, and a confusing manual. To get the bike back on the road, he had to render the gibberish coherent, and he could do this only by referring it to a model he had in his own mind of how the thing works.20 The manual, the facts before him, and his prior knowledge of motorcycles had to be integrated into some coherent understanding. Otherwise he never would have been able to come to Bob and say, “I think I’ve got a diagnosis.” What he conveyed with that announcement is that he had made a judgment. The “I think” part of Tommy’s formulation can never be fully eliminated.
As an intended substitute for personal knowledge, the division of labor predicated on an “intellectual technology” presents a false pretense of rationality, one that the mechanic sometimes has to work around in order to do his job. It would be a mistake to suppose that this is a superficial problem that could be fixed by, for example, better training procedures for the technical writing staff. What they need is experience as mechanics. Otherwise what they produce is “a projection of thingness which, as it were, skips over the things,” as Heidegger wrote in another context. Where the rubber meets the road, the mechanic is still responsible for the thing.
8
Work, Leisure, and Full Engagement
At the 1976 Olympics, the world was electrified by Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10.0 score in her gymnastics routine, which was unprecedented. In fact, the scoreboard was unable to register it—the possibility had not been anticipated, and read only to 9.99. The keeper of the scoreboard put up 1.00, and all understood. Reflecting on the event years later, Comaneci said, “During my routine and even after it, I did not think it was all that perfect. I thought it was pretty good, but athletes don’t think about history when making history. They think about what they’re doing, and that’s how it gets done.” Further, “I did not even