CONCEPT
Problem and Mystery (Marcel)
Gabriel Marcel's distinction between a problem — something external to the questioner that can be solved — and a mystery — something in which the questioner is herself involved, which can be inhabited but not resolved. The distinction names what AI can and cannot address.
Gabriel Marcel distinguished
between two fundamentally different kinds of questions. A
problem is something external to the person who encounters it — a malfunction to be repaired, a puzzle to be solved, a gap between the current state and the desired state. Problems admit of solutions; the solver stands outside the problem and operates on it. A
mystery is something in which the person who encounters it is involved — a situation in which subject and object cannot be separated, in which the questioner is part of the question. Mysteries are not solved. They are inhabited.
What am I for? is not a problem. It is a mystery. The twelve-year-old who asks it is not looking for an answer that would resolve the question from outside. She is looking for a way to live inside the question — to be shaped by it, to allow it to form her into