AI vs
Human Thinking
The use of the word thinking has expanded in a striking way in
recent years alongside the rise of artificial intelligence. Systems based on
large-scale neural networks are now capable of performing tasks that were once
regarded as inseparable from human cognition: pattern recognition,
context-sensitive response, relational abstraction, and the production of
coherent discourse. These developments call for not only a technical assessment
but also a philosophical inquiry. If it is said that machines can “think” in
this sense, the question of what exactly is meant by thinking becomes
unavoidable.
This inquiry is particularly important because artificial intelligence
defines thinking in operational terms. It proceeds through objective functions,
optimization processes, and measurable outputs. Its success is evaluated in
terms of performance, efficiency, and predictive accuracy. This approach has
been highly effective within its own domain and has profoundly transformed our
understanding of knowledge, language, and learning. At the same time, however,
it raises a more subtle question: does this effectiveness fully encompass the
meaning of thinking, or does it presuppose a more fundamental conception that
has not yet been examined?
Martin Heidegger’s reflections on thinking offer an entirely different point
of entry into this question. Heidegger approaches thinking not through its
functions or outcomes, but through the way thinking relates to what is—how
beings become visible, acquire meaning, and enter into relations with one
another. This approach does not compete with technical models of cognition, nor
does it aim to replace them. On the contrary, it asks what must already be
opened in advance for any operation, representation, or calculation to be
intelligible at all.
Read in the context of artificial intelligence, Heidegger’s conception of
thinking does not diminish technological achievements; rather, it clarifies
their horizon. It invites the reader to reflect on whether thinking is merely
an advanced form of processing, or whether it expresses a more originary
engagement with meaning, relation, and presence. The text that follows takes up
this question through Heidegger’s own formulation, offering a perspective that
neither rejects nor imitates artificial intelligence, but situates it within a
broader context of what it means to think.
“Thinking means: letting-lie-before-us and so taking-to-heart also:
beings in being.”
(Martin Heidegger, What Is Thinking?)
This formulation immediately displaces the ordinary understanding of
thinking as an act of representation, calculation, or problem-solving. To
think, Heidegger suggests, is first to let something lie before us—to
allow beings to present themselves without being immediately subsumed under
explanatory schemes or instrumental aims. This “letting-lie-before-us” is
neither passivity nor indifference; it names a disciplined restraint, a
suspension of domination, through which what is encountered may appear as it
is. Thinking thus begins not with assertion, but with openness.
Yet Heidegger does not stop at this gesture of letting. The phrase “and so
taking-to-heart” marks a decisive transition. What is allowed to lie before us
is not merely observed; it is taken up into care, concern, and responsibility.
Thinking binds us to what appears. It is an engagement that accepts being
addressed by what is, rather than standing over it as a sovereign subject.
Already here, thinking shows itself to be a mode of involvement rather than a
detached mental operation.
The decisive weight of the definition, however, lies in the final words: “beings
in being.” This is not a redundant clarification but the ontological
core of the sentence. Heidegger does not say that thinking concerns beings as
objects, nor Being as an abstract principle, but beings in their
being—beings as they stand within the openness of Being itself. To encounter a
being in its being is to encounter it as more than a discrete entity: it is to
encounter its mode of presence, its way of relating, and its place within a
shared ontological horizon.
From this perspective, thinking is intrinsically relational.
A being encountered in its being is never isolated; it refers beyond itself to
other beings and to the clearing of Being in which such relations are possible
at all. Thinking, therefore, does not merely let beings appear; it allows the relations
among beings, grounded in Being, to come into view. These relations
are not externally imposed connections but structural articulations that belong
to beings as beings.
It is here that abstraction assumes a new and often misunderstood role.
Ontological thinking does not reject abstraction; it rejects abstraction that
cuts beings off from their being. Properly understood, abstraction is a
drawing-out of relational structures that are already operative within beings
as they appear in Being. To think is to trace these relations—not over beings,
but via Being itself. Being is not a highest concept above beings; it
is the medium through which beings are intelligible to one another.
Thus, the initial gesture of letting-lie-before-us finds its fulfillment not
in quiet contemplation, but in a disciplined articulation of relations.
Thinking lets beings be, takes them to heart, and through this care allows
their mutual belonging in Being to be abstracted and held open. In this sense,
thinking is neither passive receptivity nor technical mastery, but an
ontological mediation: a way of staying with beings in their being such that
their relations—to Being and to one another—can come into view without
distortion.
Seen this way, Heidegger’s definition does not retreat from rigor; it
redefines rigor at its root. Thinking is the patient, responsible tracing of
beings in being—and of the relational world that unfolds only when we allow
Being itself to guide the search.
