Academic Biography:
Tyler’s research interests include 19th and 20th-century continental philosophy, particularly Nietzsche and Foucault, ethics, social theory, colonial & decolonial theory, nihilism, the Anthropocene, the post-human, and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Tyler completed his Master of Arts in Sociology degree with a designation in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought (CSPT) in August 2023. His MA thesis, titled "AGI, All Too Human; Nietzsche and Artificial Intelligence” was on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Nietzsche. The thesis discusses how the unity of Platonism, Christianity and Western science leads to what Nietzsche calls the “death of God”. The death of God induces a cultural nihilism to which Nietzsche prescribes the übermensch. However, science also wishes to resolve this nihilism and replace God in the form of Artificial General Intelligence. Eroding the assumption that technology is not neutral and contains the biases of the culture around its creation, the thesis works to indicate society’s drive for a technology such as AGI and what that drive, informed by our social and cultural disposition, will provide for AGI in terms of implicit biases and expected outcomes and possibilities. Central to the paper is the idea that the desire to create AGI is not a naturalistic drive but a particular cultural drive informed by Platonism, Christianity, and science in Western culture. The thesis has been published in UVIC’s database and is currently being edited into a monograph to be published in 2024.
Prior to his master’s, Tyler attended Douglas College and The University of the Fraser Valley, where he completed a double major in Sociology and Philosophy Honours. The title of his honours thesis was Aesthetics and Madness. The Correspondence of Rivière & Artaud Through Nietzsche and Foucault. In his undergraduate degree, Tyler specialized in 19th & 20th century continental philosophy, particularly Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, and Foucault.
At The University of the Fraser Valley, Tyler was the president and founder of The Philosophy Association of UFV (PHILUFV), where he started and led reading groups on Nietzsche, led philosophy study groups, hosted events and provided opportunities for students to learn about graduate school and honours programs.
Conferences Papers and Media:
2021:
‘Language Rigidification and Managing Logic and Reason in Nietzsche’s ‘On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’.’ at the Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference. April 17-18, 2021
2022:
“The Ontological Role of Sex in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness” at the North American Sartre Society, Washington, D.C. November 4-6 2022
Values and AGI Infinite Monkeys Podcast
2023:
‘Towards a Nietzschean Analysis of Technology Through Ascending and Descending Will to Power.’ 2023 CSPT Conference on Social Movements & Technology, Victoria, BC. May 5-6, 2023
‘Ascetic Surveillance and Artificial General Intelligence.’ XX ISA World Congress of Sociology, Melbourne, AU. June 25 -July 1, 2023
‘The Embodiment of Artificial General Intelligence through Platonic-Christian Asceticism.’ Bodies Conference. Concordia University, Montreal, QC. September 15, 2023
Tyler has also attended over a dozen seminars and conferences in Vancouver, Victoria, New York, and Washington D.C. covering topics from Sartre, Marx, Adorno, Marcuse, Sade, Kant, Nietzsche, Gramsci, and Indigenous languages.
Completed Works:
AGI, All Too Human; Nietzsche and Artificial General Intelligence.
Abstract:
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are seen as the pinnacle of human technology, capable of intelligence beyond humans and a beyond-human capacity to know, create, and process the entirety of human knowledge. Contrary to popular assumptions supported by faith in science, technology is not neutral and contains within it the residual ideological assumptions of those who created it. The need, or will, to create particular technologies is indicated by cultural drives, which Nietzsche designates as the Will to Power. Nietzsche’s übermensch is an affirmation of life and becomes his solution to the problem of nihilism that results from the cultural unity of Platonism and Christianity. The übermensch affirms life and the body through the myth of eternal return and focuses on the importance and relevance of the world-in-itself, or physis, as a literal grounding principle for meaning and values in after the ‘death of God.’ Contrary to some popular claims about Nietzsche’s perceived support for trans/post-humanism, Nietzsche’s analysis points to the drives that take AGI as the manifestation of Platonic-Christian drives but presents the übermensch as a solution, where AGI would be the symptom. Offering an extensive interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy, this thesis presents a lineage of Nietzsche’s thought that demonstrates his creation of the übermensch and why AGI should be seen as its opposite. AGI becomes a necessity only for a secular Platonic-Christian culture that needs to resolve the problem of nihilism with a replacement of God in a material form resistant to the scrutiny of science. AGI should then be understood as a theological necessity to support and justify science and, therefore, will necessarily contain theological biases that would reify those created by Platonism and Christianity. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of the contradiction of a technology that has become a secular-theological necessity and a material impossibility.
Branston, Tyler. “AGI, All Too Human; Nietzsche and Artificial General Intelligence.” Thesis, University of Victoria, 2023. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/15348.
Jacques Rivière & Antonin Artaud
Lou Andreas-Salome, Paul Rée, Friedrich Nietzsche
Presented Paper: Language Rigidification and Managing Logic and Reason in Nietzsche’s ‘On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’.
Abstract:
It is my goal to outline Nietzsche's perspective of language formation and progression in his essay ‘On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’ and show how hunting for truths and essences within logic, reason, and scientific rationalization is anthropomorphic, goes beyond the truth of the world in-itself and dominates the knowledge sphere. In a dual role, logical conceptual frameworks provide a perspective and approach to truths while at the same time favour essences, universals and absolutes and acts as a self-declared essential means of knowledge acquisition. Logical conceptual frameworks that prioritize universals and essences ignore the nature of things themselves in favour of language conceptions that act as a simulacrum. Essences drawn from discussion around concepts give essences of the simulacrum of reality and not of reality itself. Viewing logical conceptual frameworks as simulacrum does not erode their utility but allows us to consider other perspectives that can help us manage the world in-itself, opening the door for aesthetic frameworks of looking at the world with, through, and as art; and allowing indigenous ways of knowing to contribute to knowledge without colonizing their thought with impositions of western knowledge in the form of absolutes, universals, essences, and Platonic forms.