Jacob L. Goodson

Goodson's research involves identifying and navigating three different positions within the philosophy of technology for the purpose of thinking through the use of artificial intelligence in higher education. First, William James’s pragmatism as defended and described in Pragmatism (1907), a book whose arguments lend itself to justifying the use of artificial intelligence in particular because such technologies never really replace human thinking (“The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything”—William James’s famous sentence from Pragmatism) but should be seen as useful for helping human creativity and production. Second, Martin Heidegger’s skepticism toward the use of technology as articulated in his helpful and wise essay entitled “A Question Concerning Technology” (1954) — which offers reasons for why we should be diligent in discouraging the use of artificial intelligence because of how it negatively impacts human thinking. Third, Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodernism as defended and described in his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) — which suggests that we have been living within and relying on computational models for decades. Part of what it means to be postmodern, for Lyotard, involves realizing how thinking and writing have been determined by a variety of technologies. Goodson believes all three of these positions offer wisdom for the use of artificial intelligence within higher education, and the question becomes which position fits best with certain educational contexts and pedagogical methods.