Machine Ontology. The Splendors and Miseries of Machinism

The machine is an intermediary between the natural reality and the impossible reality up to a point. Therefore, understanding this phenomenon in the ontological dimension is a necessary element in the analysis of the problems of both the present and the future. In the philosophy of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, the concept of a machine is very relevant. Machinism develops around it as a worldview and philosophical direction. However, the machine remains “understandable by default” for it: this concept acts as a tool for analyzing society, culture or the psyche. This turns out to be possible by ignoring a significant part of the semantic spectrum of μηχανή. The exception is the mechanology of Jacques Lafitte and Gilbert Simondon, which is interested in the machine as a particular invention. In this article, the methodology of machine analysis relies on the object-oriented ontology by Ian Bogost. Based on the conducted research, a number of conclusions has been made. Firstly, it is possible to talk about the identity of reality and the machine only for the basic ontological level; a person has created an artifact, which is an objectified ontological constituent. However, at the next, higher level, this identity falls apart: the machine is what it is, because it does not coincide with natural reality being distinguished by the nature of its existence. The invention of the machine is an ontological work in its nature: it is the creation of an interaction system of one-dimensional spaces. In its reasoning, machinism does not take into account these conceptual points using the machine as a metaphor. Therefore, its conceptual resources interfere with the understanding of modern machines and their interaction with humans. Secondly, some modern inventions in the field of generative artificial intelligence are new types of machines (non-classical machines) that include the factor of probability and ambiguity as an element of the mechanism. Human invention is reaching a new ontological level, which requires an updated conceptual toolkit. 

Keywords: machine, invention, machinism, mechanism, philosophy of the machine, machine ontology, non-classical machine, artificial intelligence, neural network