Much of my current research is devoted to understanding judicious technology use and identifying what, if anything, distinguishes humans and human-made artifacts from digital simulacra. Technology can be useful. But, if forced to choose, I would pick meaningful inefficiency over meaningless efficiency. Unfortunately, questioning technological trends often gets dismissed as “Luddism.” As a philosopher trained to examine arguments on all sides of an issue, I do not find this lopsidedness helpful. Things would not turn out well for a driver if their car could not slow down, stop, or go in reverse. So, when it comes to technology, I aim to make those three moves respectable and feasible.
This work on technology and AI safety started in 2012, when I (along with my colleague Ryan Tonkens) contributed to The Machine Question: AI, Ethics and Moral Responsibility, edited by David Gunkel, Joanna Bryson, and Steve Torrance. My stance on the AI responsibility gap underwent refinement (see this and this) and branched into other issues. At the close of a 2016 paper in Cybernetics and Human Knowing, I called for “a respite from technological progress” and suggested that, in addition to Dennett’s “intentional stance,” we can “also adopt what might be called the contemplative stance.” In a recent piece on smartphone use and attention, I made good on that promissory note. Continuing this, I am presently drafting a manuscript titled Invasive Technologies and Endangered Experiences. You can receive monthly excerpts/updates by using the box below:
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Past projects
I also maintain a career-long side interest in heterodoxy and maverick thinkers who, by choice, temperament, or necessity, work(ed) outside academic philosophy’s incentive structures. My appreciation of the need for dissent and error comes mainly from Charles S. Peirce, on whom I have written quite a bit.
My first book, Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs, which just came out in soft-cover and was reviewed in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, applies some of the ideas of Peirce to debates in philosophy of mind. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are often seen as conflicting commitments, I try to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. At the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference, my book was the object of a symposium titled “Against Mindless Pragmatism.” That slogan summarizes well my work.
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Marc Champagne’s new book Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs is a triumph. The book is eminently well informed, well reasoned, well written, and well worth reading.
Jamin Pelkey, Toronto Metropolitan University
The sense of “meaning” that my research is concerned with isn’t just the narrow one intended by semiotics, but also the wide sense intended by expressions like “finding meaning in one’s life.” We are in the middle of a transition period, grasping for new or old stories that will guide us. This can be done consciously or badly, by default. As current trends and events attest, when a society tries to chase away the religious, it comes back galloping (often in even less healthy forms). Facts get ignored and questions get shut down or shouted down whenever they challenge the reigning narrative. This political zealotry illustrates how the human need for meaning will not go away. It is possible, however, to satisfy that need without dogma or supernaturalism. So, as I explain in Myth, Meaning, and Antifragile Individualism (p. 181), achieving a tenable secular alternative “requires (among other things) a viable theory of values, a viable theory of consciousness, a viable theory of meaning, […] a viable theory of aesthetic experience and ritual” and, I would now add, a viable justification of procreation and parenting — since humanism is pointless without humans.
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Philosopher Marc Champagne’s analytic skills are impressively on display as he presents and variously dissects, agrees with, and critiques Jordan Peterson’s hugely ambitious project to integrate modern science with the essential themes of Western religious and humanist traditions.
Stephen Hicks, Rockford University
My work has so far been translated into Chinese, Spanish, and (soon) Arabic. If you would like to add a language to that list, feel free to reach out.
