Before the Algorithm: Philosophy and its Undecidables

Abstract

Thinking and decision-making through algorithmic means has put critique as deductive proof of its violence into question, neither because automation is antithetical to critique nor because a critique of violence can only be done by philosophy and not computation. Rather, insofar as the violence of the algorithmic remains undecidable within the entanglement of philosophy, science, arithmetic, and computation, its critique—whose deconstructive force takes on a quasi-algorithmic character—must recursively produce the undecidables of (bio)philosophical systems. By calling into question the decidability of a system into which it is placed, philosophy’s undecidables enable an ethics of thinking through concepts of hospitality, justice, and friendship.

Yet, if undecidables of philosophy can be put to work by recursive operations of the algorithmic that repurpose anomalies, noise, and randomness towards the security of a system, then what kind of violence emerges from this work and what might a critique of this violence entail? This dissertation examines the reproduction of undecidables by systems that attempt to secure their consistency and completeness. These security systems—whether metaphysical, meta-mathematical, or meta-immunological—(re)produce the very undecidables against which they sought to secure by recursively revisiting the systems’ boundaries. This project implicates the (bio)philosophical in the algorithmic insofar as the recursive management of boundaries, and therefore undecidables, belongs to the order of sovereignty.

The dissertation demonstrates, through the analytic reading technique of deconstruction, the recursive operation of relaying undecidables of philosophical systems. In reading across scholars whose writings extend themselves to working through undecidables that arise from (ontological) security systems, the dissertation stages algorithmic violence as a problematic of philosophy and computation having stakes in the same horizon of thinking and decision-making, of whose critique necessarily remains incomplete and incompressible across the fields. A critique of algorithmic violence is thus bound to be as complex and violent as the violence it attempts to critique.

Date of Award	31 Jul 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Mercedes Bunz (Supervisor)