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Chat GPT does Hegel!

Brian Leiter

Philosopher Paul Studtmann was struggling through Hegel's Encyclopedia, and decided to ask ChatGPT for help with the "Absolute Spirit" chapter.  He offered the following instruction:  "Please rewrite the following passage from Hegel in language that a five-year-old can understand…."  He then entered each section of the chapter for ChatGPT to "translate" as it were.  The result is actually pretty remarkable:  Download Absolute_Spirit_5_ELI5

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7 responses to “Chat GPT does Hegel!”

  1. Robert A Gressis

    Can you explain what you mean by "remarkable"? Is that it does an admirable job of clarifying Hegel, or that it completely misunderstands him, or something else?

    I read the first paragraph, and I confess, it seemed quite good to me, but I'm no Hegel scholar, very much on purpose.

    BL COMMENT: I meant it in a positive sense, a remarkably good simplification, quite charming really.

    Reply
  2. John Rapko

    Needs more cowbell.

    Reply
  3. Paul Studtmann

    In response to Robert A Gressis, I agree with his suggestion: it is a remarkably good simplification and is indeed quite charming. If you get a chance to read the entire output, which shouldn't take all that long, I think you will find it to be both illuminating and oddly moving. Indeed, a very advanced scholar of the history of philosophy said to me after reading it: 'I think I finally understand Hegel!'

    Reply
  4. anon

    Might I ask what version of ChatGPT? (And yes, more cowbell.)

    Reply
  5. Paul Studtmann

    ChatGPT 3.5. Maybe 4.0 would add the needed cowbell!

    Reply
  6. Ludovic M

    Brings to mind this text both as process and in its content, that is 'performativily,' but also phenomenologically, much in the way Magritte's Ceci N'est Pas une Pipe seems to do: 'Each mind recapitulates the work of countless minds, from which it derives all its words and ideas. A mind without history would be empty. For example, “This is a breath” is a sentence in English with thousands of years of thought embedded in it.'

    Source: https://peterlevine.ws/?p=26293

    I was half expecting for the AI generated text to mention, by way of example, a groovy experience involving the Spirit reflected in a vacuum cleaner and the latter resonating palpably but intangibly with said Spirit so as to say: Have compassion even for that.

    Also, as an aside, doesn't the tripartiteness of Hegel's dialectic lend itself so very perfectly to conspiratorial thinking as the default mode of the Hegelianist's overarching mode of reasoning about matters great and small, including the geopolitical, and by extension the political thought of others (whether disclosed or undisclosed by those others, especially those in positions of power)?

    Reply
  7. Frank MIata

    Why would we want to explain the concept of Absolute Spirit to a five year old?

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