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Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology
ONLINE FIRST ARTICLES
Articles forthcoming in in this journal are available Online First prior to publication. More details about Online First and how to use and cite these articles can be found HERE.
March 9, 2024
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Oliver Alexander Tafdrup
Ernst Cassirer and the Symbolic Mediation of Technological Artefacts An Addendum to the Vocabulary of Mediation Theory
first published on March 9, 2024
The concept of mediation plays a central part in several positions of contemporary philosophy of technology. Especially Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek have served to establish mediation as one of the core concepts in the postphenomenologically rooted philosophical analysis of human-technology-world relations. While meditation theory provides many important conceptual and empirical contributions to our knowledge of how material artefacts shape our embodied being in the world, too little attention has arguably been given to the development of concepts that enable a philosophical analysis of the symbolic aspect of technological artefacts. This paper aims to develop the notion of ‘symbolic mediation’ by drawing on inspiration from the tradition of philosophical anthropology, more specifically, the work of Ernst Cassirer and his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (PSF). Drawing on empirical examples of human-robot interactions (HRI), I coin two types of symbolic mediation: 1) mythic mediation and 2) aesthetic mediation.
March 8, 2024
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Cristian C. Vélez
Re-embodiments and Mind-Extensions Categorizing Cognitive Enhancement Cybernetic Technologies
first published on March 8, 2024
Currently, humanity is experiencing an explosive growth in technological objects designed to improve the body and mind. The main objective of this article is to review two recent classificatory and explanatory systems to cognitive enhancement cybernetic technologies, including both wearable and implantable artifacts that reorganize human embodiment or extend the mind. I argue that an outdated model of the cognitive sciences serves as the basis for these revised systems and taxonomies. Taking an embodied approach to the cognitive sciences, I propose an alternative focus to classify cognitive enhancement cybernetic technologies. Specifically, by adopting a non-orthodox enactive approach to embodied cognition, I propose a new classificatory system that redefines the notion of the cybernetically enhanced human, restricting it to a purely cognitive context. Finally, I evaluate some philosophical implications of my system.
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Muriel Leuenberger
Technology, Personal Information, and Identity
first published on March 8, 2024
Novel and emerging technologies can provide users with new kinds and unprecedented amounts of information about themselves, such as autobiographical information, neurodata, health information, or characteristics inferred from online behavior. Technology that provides extensive personal information (PI technology) can impact who we understand ourselves to be, how we constitute ourselves, and indeed who we are. This paper analyzes how PI technology’s external, quantified perspective on us affects identity based on a narrative identity theory. Disclosing the intimate relationship between PI technology and identity sheds light on a whole new range of ethical issues that have received insufficient attention so far. Personal information provided by technology is not just information that belongs to individuals but also changes them.
February 1, 2024
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Susan B. Levin
The Less Visible Side of Transhumanism Is Dangerously Un-radical
first published on February 1, 2024
According to transhumanists who urge the radical enhancement of human beings, humanity’s top priority should be engineering “posthumans,” whose features would include agelessness. Increasingly, transhumanism is critiqued on foundational grounds rather than based largely on anticipated results of its implementation, such as rising social inequality. This expansion is crucial but insufficient because, despite its radical aim, transhumanism reflects beliefs and attitudes that are evident in the broader culture. With a focus on the yearning to eliminate aging, I consider four of these: a disproportionate reliance on science and technology to address major human challenges; the conceptualization of human beings in terms of binaries like “young-old”; a repudiation of vulnerability; and intensifying perfectionism. Illuminating these interlocked commitments both deepens an existing critique of transhumanism and draws our attention to deleterious cultural views that must be vigorously contested if our commitment to human flourishing is to be deep and unwavering.
January 24, 2024
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Luca M. Possati
Negotiating Actors: ANT and Social Robotics
first published on January 24, 2024
This paper intends to address social robotics from the Actor-network theory (ANT) perspective. Starting from the critique of Seibt’s approach and the distinction between anthropomorphing and sociomorphing, the paper proposes a new methodological approach based on ANT and negotiation concepts. This approach allows us to: a) assume a more symmetrical ontology in which robots are considered as social agents, like humans; b) consider all the interactional elements as of equal importance; and c) overcome the dualistic limit that is often imposed on social robotics studies, i.e., the tendency to consider only the one-to-one relationship, one man-one robot, inside the laboratory. Anthropomorphing and sociomorphing are the results of a negotiation process that cannot be reduced to a series of degrees of simulation, but must be understood as a complex interactional process between many agents and material mediations.
December 12, 2023
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Ana Cuevas-Badallo
A Naturalistic View of the Technical Artifacts
first published on December 12, 2023
This paper suggests revising the notion of in consideration of the naturalist position. I analyze whether the characterizations of technical artifacts proposed by the philosophy of technology can be extended to include the technical creations of other organisms. This will be done using the theories of “niche construction” and “organisms as ecosystem engineers.” Those theories would allow us to understand human technical creations within what human beings do naturally and in gradual continuity with what other species do.
December 9, 2023
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Vitaly Pronskikh
The Ethical Aspects of Choosing a Nuclear Fuel Cycle
first published on December 9, 2023
In this paper, we addressed the problem of choosing a nuclear fuel cycle. Ethical problems related to the choice of a nuclear fuel cycle, such as the depletion of natural uranium reserves, the accumulation of nuclear waste, and the connection with the problems of nonidentity and distributive justice are considered. We examined cultural differences in attitudes toward nuclear safety and the associated ambiguities in the choice of a nuclear fuel cycle. We suggested that the reduction in consumption of natural uranium does not seem to be a feasible way of reducing nuclear waste because of the nonidentity problem.
November 11, 2023
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Tom Sorell
Deepfakes and Political Misinformation in U.S. Elections
first published on November 11, 2023
Audio and video footage produced with the help of AI can show politicians doing discreditable things that they have not actually done. This is deepfaked material. Deepfakes are sometimes claimed to have special powers to harm the people depicted and their audiences—powers that more traditional forms of faked imagery and sound footage lack. According to some philosophers, deepfakes are particularly “believable,” and widely available technology will soon make deepfakes proliferate. I first give reasons why deepfake technology is not particularly well suited to producing “believable” political misinformation in a sense to be defined. Next, I challenge claims from Don Fallis and Regina Rini about the consequences of the wide availability of deepfakes. My argument is not that deepfakes are harmless, but that their power to do major harm is highly conditional in liberal party political environments that contain sophisticated mass-media.
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Mark Thomas Young
How Artifacts Acquire Agency
first published on November 11, 2023
It is common to view the technologies that surround us as either tools or machines. This distinction is often understood to reflect a difference between kinds of technology: those which operate by human agency, and those which operate by their own, technological form of performative agency. This paper aims to explore how common arguments for the performative agency of machines ultimately fail to establish the claim that anything other than humans are capable of performing tasks. In light of such problems, I will propose an alternative conception which understands machines to be distinguished by the way in which the human agency on which they depend is concealed. After examining reasons why we should consider this concealment to represent a social rather than technological phenomenon, this paper concludes by exploring implications this view holds for the way in which the ethics of automation is approached in the philosophy of technology.
October 31, 2023
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Anette Forss
Digitalizing Nursing Education amid Covid-19 Technological Breakdown through a Reflexive and Postphenomenological Lens
first published on October 31, 2023
The incorporation of digital technologies in higher education has become a research topic actualized by the Covid-19 pandemic, including the re-thinking of theories and ontological assumptions supporting the role of these technologies in blended learning. Using nursing education in urban Sweden as an example, I present a reflexive and postphenomenological analysis of critical incidents during the use of an online assessment software for high stakes exams during the Covid-19 outbreak. Based on the analysis, I argue that the rapid digitalization prompted by the Covid-19 outbreak illuminates the importance of articulating digital technologies in higher education as human-technology relations in light of the philosophy of technology, notably postphenomenology. I conclude that postphenomenology can be helpful to clarify the non-neutrality and multistability of digital technologies and to articulate nuances of the human-technology relation, in blended learning.
October 17, 2023
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Sanne Lisborg, Oliver Tafdrup
Virtual Laboratories and Posthuman Learning
first published on October 17, 2023
The increasing use of virtual laboratories in education raises new philosophical—and perhaps especially phenomenological—questions related to how this type of technological mediation affects the user’s sense of situated embodied being: sensory perception. The empirical basis of this phenomenological inquiry is a case study conducted in a Danish school setting. This allows us to compare analog laboratory work with virtual. Inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we describe how pupils’ bodily and multisensory interactions with laboratory tools differ across physical and virtual settings. Virtual laboratories are complex, sociotechnical, often opaque practices that affect the pupils’ sense of embodiment, thus prompting the need for in situ development of hermeneutical strategies for bridging the gap between the simulated laboratory and the physical world. In the final section, we discuss how these strategies can be considered posthuman learning processes.
August 12, 2023
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Cristiano Vidali
Marginal Themes A Phenomenological Approach to Distraction in Digital Media Users
first published on August 12, 2023
Among the research that nowadays deals with the impact of digital technologies on attention, little is concerned with problematizing the theoretical premises about the nature of this cognitive faculty. Hence, even highly credited studies on digital distraction draw their conclusions from underexamined models of attention, despite them not being the only ones available. In our article we intend to focus on this problem, starting by discussing two case studies in the field of cognitive psychology and trying to show their theoretical shortcomings when compared with an alternative model of attention. We will thus explore the account that a contemporary phenomenologist, Paul Sven Arvidson, has provided of attention and distraction. Finally, we will try to question the conclusions of the empirical studies by reframing them within Arvidson’s model, suggesting the importance of sharpening the definition of attention and distraction as preliminary work for investigating how the digital relates to them.
August 8, 2023
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Alessandro De Cesaris
Digital Metempsychosis? A Critique of the Two-Worlds Model of Immersivity
first published on August 8, 2023
The paper proposes the notion of “Two-Worlds Model” (TWM) as a theoretical framework in order to analyse some currents in the contemporary debate on technologically mediated experience. According to this model, technologically mediated experience—especially immersive experience—can be described as a form of “digital metempsychosis”—a feeling of being elsewhere. The paper argues that this model is not new in the history of philosophy, and that it is a very common theoretical and cultural strategy, often used to reduce medial differences—differences in the way of being or of experiencing something—as objectual difference. By analysing some specific topics—the most common accounts of immersive experience, the relation between immersivity and presence, and the notion of “cyberspace”—the paper aims at showing the limits of the TWM, in particular when it is used in order to describe technologically mediated experience.
August 5, 2023
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Maciej Bednarski
The Use of Digital Technology and Processes of Displacement
first published on August 5, 2023
In this paper, I discuss features of the interaction between a user and digital technology and how this transforms our contemporary experience of space and place. Analyzing this interaction is important for understanding global processes of displacement and creation of what Marc Augé calls non-places and their relation to technology in general. Drawing from Heidegger’s tool-analysis, I show that displacement is a structural element of the usage of absolutely ready-to-hand, access-providing digital devices. My main argument runs as follows: a) the use of digital devices bypasses place directly in our activities; b) because of that, places themselves become more and more obsolete; and c) that leads to changes in how we conceive places and placefulness of technology. Instead, we think of the latter as immaterial, without a location. The immateriality of technology that we experience is reinforcing processes of displacement, as it allows them to continue thriving without being noticed and adequately conceptualized.
August 4, 2023
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Bradley Warfield
Digital Technology and the Problem of Dialogical Discourse in Social Media
first published on August 4, 2023
In this paper, I discuss some prominent features of our use of social media and what I think are its harms. My paper has three main parts. In the first part, I use a dialogical framework to argue that much of the discursive activity online is manifested as an ethically impoverished other-directedness and interactivity. In the second part, I identify and discuss several reasons that help explain why so much of the discursive activity on social media is ethically lacking. And in the final part, I mention some of the effects these discursive practices have on us even when offline. Specifically, I suggest that the persistent use of digital communication technologies trains its users to adopt these problematic online discursive attitudes and activities into their experiences offline, making it more difficult for them to engage with themselves and others in more dialogically ethical ways.
August 3, 2023
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Paul Scriven
A Social Phenomenology of Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in Videogames
first published on August 3, 2023
Non-player characters (NPCs) are a common feature in contemporary videogames, particularly role-playing games (RPGs). Evidence suggests player relationships with these fictional, digital characters can manifest as deeply emotional experiences that can ‘bleed’ off the screen and affect the daily lives of players. However, research in this area is still in its infancy, and as yet has not been given a thorough conceptual treatment. Applying the sociological phenomenology of Alfred Schütz, this paper will examine the structure of the experiences that players have with NPCs, and how these experiences manifest as meaningful social experiences. By a reconceptualization of the player-NPC relationship as a deeply mediated human-human relationship, this paper aims to build a foundation for further phenomenological study into how players engage with fictional characters in immersive videogame worlds.
August 2, 2023
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Hao Wang
Algorithmic Colonization of Love The Ethical Challenges of Dating App Algorithms in the Age of AI
first published on August 2, 2023
Love is often seen as the most intimate aspect of our lives, but it is increasingly engineered by a few programmers with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Nowadays, numerous dating platforms are deploying so-called smart algorithms to identify a greater number of potential matches for a user. These AI-enabled matchmaking systems, driven by a rich trove of data, can not only predict what a user might prefer but also deeply shape how people choose their partners. This paper draws on Jürgen Habermas’s “colonization of the lifeworld” thesis to critically explore the insidious influence of delegating romantic decision-making to an algorithm. The love lifeworld is colonized inasmuch as online dating algorithms encroach into our romantic relations to the extent that communicative action within romance is replaced by the technocratic rules of an algorithm.
July 21, 2023
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Francesco Striano
Alert! Ideological Interfaces, TikTok, and the Meme Teleology
first published on July 21, 2023
The way we human beings approach the world has always been mediated. To be precise, it is mediated by interfaces. The starting point of this paper, therefore, will be to define, in the most general way possible, the interface. I will then focus mostly on the analysis of contemporary digital visual interfaces, and on how they changed the human way of perceiving. In the light of this analysis, I will highlight the “ideology” that spoils current interface design and allows contemporary interfaces to “deceive” us much more than previous technologies did. The central part of the paper will be devoted to illustrating the peculiar way in which digital visual interfaces capture attention and predispose to courses of action. The case study provided by TikTok will help to explain this mechanism. Finally, I will point out the possible negative effects of ideological interfaces and I will review some possible solutions.
June 28, 2023
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Bono Po-Jen Shih
Engineering as “Technology of Technology” and the Subjugated Technical Practice
first published on June 28, 2023
This article calls into question the simplistic identification of modern technology with quantitative efficiency in order to develop three main themes. First, I establish that technology, broadly construed, is the use of knowledge and resources to meet specific human needs. Accordingly, dominant technical practice that favors efficiency and numerical criteria and discriminates against other technologies should more appropriately be called “technology of technology.” Second, I delineate how dominant practice in engineering is an exemplar of technology of technology, when it becomes socially ambitious while remaining technically provincial and bears upon our personal and institutional life. Third, I illustrate what I call the “subjugated technical practice,” which exists under the rule of the dominant technical practice. Recognizing the importance of subjugated technical practices to engineering, I propose the concept of “critical technology of technology,” which is intended to advance technological alternatives and make critique an essential part of our technological world.
June 10, 2023
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Beth Preston
Technology and Human Agency Sustainable Technology as Microcosm
first published on June 10, 2023
Sustainable technology is a microcosm that illuminates the relationship between technology and human agency. We tend to think about sustainability in terms of the properties of things. However, technology is not just things but techniques which have their own bearing on sustainability, for users may employ sustainable technologies in unsustainable ways. Clueless or stymied users may be managed through education or redesign; however, there are intractable users who cannot be managed through either approach. I trace the cause of this intractability to interaction between the improvisational nature of human agency and the multiple realizability of artifact functions. I argue that managing intractable users requires going with the flow of their relationship to technology rather than trying to control it through education or redesign, and that democratizing the development and distribution of technology is the best way to do this. Finally, these results easily generalize to technologies not aimed at sustainability.
June 9, 2023
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Regletto Aldrich Imbong
Good Food in a Technological World Focal Things and Practices Among Lumad Groups in Mindanao
first published on June 9, 2023
In this paper, I develop a concept of “good food” by placing in dialogue Albert Borgmann’s notions of focal things and practices with the experiences of two Lumad groups in Mindanao, Philippines, the Manobos and the Blaans. The “availability” of contemporary food, resulting from the “device paradigm,” creates an atrophic existence rooted in social and material disengagement with food production. I argue that the experiences of these two Lumad groups offer rich examples of Borgmann’s focal practices that show how to conceptualize good food in a technological world. This concept can be concretely realized through practices of food and technical democracy which institutionalize the values of the communalist and collectivist experiences of these Lumad groups.
March 28, 2023
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Ken Daley
A Conditional Defense of the Use of Algorithms in Criminal Sentencing
first published on March 28, 2023
The presence of predictive AI has steadily expanded into ever-increasing aspects of civil society. I aim to show that despite reasons for believing the use of such systems is currently problematic, these worries give no indication of their future potential. I argue that the absence of moral limits on how we might manipulate automated systems, together with the likelihood that they are more easily manipulated in the relevant ways than humans, suggests that such systems will eventually outstrip the human ability to make accurate judgments and unbiased predictions. I begin with some reasonable justifications for the use of predictive AI. I then discuss two of the most significant reasons for believing the use of such systems is currently problematic before arguing that neither provides sufficient reason against such systems being superior in the future. In fact, there’s reason to believe they can, in principle, be preferable to human decision makers.
March 18, 2023
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Anthony Longo
Digital Reconfigurations of Collective Identity on Twitter A Narrative Approach
first published on March 18, 2023
Digital technology has prompted philosophers to rethink some of the fundamental categories we use to make sense of the world and ourselves. Particularly, the concept of ‘identity’ and its reconfiguration in the digital age has sparked much debate in this regard. While many studies have addressed the impact of the digital on personal and social identities, the concept of ‘collective identity’ has been remarkably absent in such inquiries. In this article, I take the context of social movements as an entry point to discuss the reconfiguration of collective identity in social media environments. I do so by introducing a narrative approach to collective identity. I argue that Twitter’s affordances invite new ways of constructing collective identities and imply a shifting relationship between the individual and the collective.
March 17, 2023
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Emanuele Clarizio
Technical Invention as Biological Function A Brief Introduction to French Biological Philosophy of Technology
first published on March 17, 2023
This article aims to introduce English-speaking readers to a still little-known tradition of French philosophy of technology: the “biological philosophy of technology.” As recognized by Georges Canguilhem, this philosophy was initiated by Henri Bergson, who conceived of technology as an extension of life, which in its evolution, creates natural tools (organs) and artificial ones (technical objects). The paleontologist André Leroi-Gourhan took up this thesis and put it to the test of archaeological data to demonstrate, on the one hand, the biological basis of technical evolution and on the other hand, the importance of technics for human evolution. Finally, Gilbert Simondon extended Leroi-Gourhan’s scientific technology from the study of tools to that of machines, providing yet another fruitful example of the biological philosophy of technology.
February 15, 2023
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Jessica Ludescher Imanaka
The Psychopolitics of Cognitive Enhancement The Long Transhuman Shadow
first published on February 15, 2023
This article explores the shadow side of transhumanist aspirations to transform humanity using cognitive enhancement technologies (CET). The central problem concerns how the desired transhuman anthropogenesis alters the ethical capacities of the human person. Focusing on the intersection between autonomy and equity, the article posits that inequity enhances individual autonomy for some at the expense of others, hence degrading collective autonomy. This process is already unfolding under neoliberalism, as analyzed via Byung-Chul Han’s theory of psychopolitics. Han’s psychopolitics reveals how the imagined increases in autonomy brought by CET would not yield an authentic enhancement of autonomy, but rather result in further undesirable permutations of humanity. It would erode autonomy while increasing inequity, thus degrading empathy and solidarity. Franco Berardi’s critique of semiocapitalism nuances Han’s theory in support of collective autonomy and an anthropogenesis guided by contemplative empathy. Conjoined, they amplify the possibilities for alternative therapeutic forms of transformational CET.
February 4, 2023
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Corinne Cath, Fieke Jansen
Dutch Comfort: The Limits of AI Governance through Municipal Registers
first published on February 4, 2023
In this commentary, we respond to the editorial letter by Professor Luciano Floridi entitled “AI as a public service: Learning from Amsterdam and Helsinki.” Here, Floridi considers the positive impact of municipal AI registers, which collect a limited number of algorithmic systems used by the city of Amsterdam and Helsinki. We question a number of assumptions about AI registers as a governance model for automated systems. We start with recent attempts to normalize AI by decontextualizing and depoliticizing it, which is a fraught political project that encourages what we call ‘ethics theater’ given the proven dangers of using these systems in the context of the digital welfare state. We agree with Floridi that much can be learned from these registers about the role of AI systems in municipal city management. The lessons we draw, on the basis of our extensive ethnographic engagement with digital wellfare states, are distinctly less optimistic.
January 27, 2023
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Jurgita Imbrasaite
Acting-with: On the Development of a Public Realm on TikTok during the Pandemic and its Potential to Enable Action
first published on January 27, 2023
The pandemic and subsequent wave of lockdowns in many countries led to a massive increase in TikTok users globally, boosting the platform’s public significance. Even if TikTok’s political potential is already established, the platform still lacks a theoretical underpinning as a space for action. Using both a political-philosophical as well as a techno-philosophical perspective, I seek to discuss and substantiate TikTok’s potential as a public realm that enables political action. Due to the unique algorithmic logic of this app, I argue that users are acting-with the algorithm when engaging in political action from home: be it in the form of national political protest or international acts of care and empowerment. I base my analysis on philosophical theory, cross-disciplinary TikTok research, and my own experiences on TikTok during the pandemic years.
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Rockwell F. Clancy
Global Engineering Ethics at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (China) Research and Teaching in Cross-cultural, International Contexts
first published on January 27, 2023
Engineering is more cross-cultural and international than ever before, presenting challenges and opportunities in the way engineering ethics is conceived and delivered. To assist in providing more effective ethics education to increasingly diverse groups, this paper shares three related projects implemented at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (China). These projects are united in their attempts to address challenges arising from the increasingly global nature of engineering. The first is a course on global engineering ethics, developed for and attended by engineering students from diverse backgrounds. The second is a website hosting contents on global engineering ethics education and conducting research related to cross-cultural moral psychology. The third explores methods of assessing engineering ethics and moral development, using paradigms of ethical decision-making. Although these projects were developed in a Chinese-US collaboration with university students, these contexts could facilitate the adoption of similar programs elsewhere, with practicing engineers.
January 21, 2023
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Dakota Root
A Merleau-Pontian Account of Embodied Coping in Virtual Reality
first published on January 21, 2023
Virtual reality (VR) offers a simulated environment where users can interact directly with their surroundings and provokes questions about embodiment and disconnection. This article will demonstrate how VR’s unique embodiment features differentiate it from the experience of non-VR online and video games and allow the transfer of movement and first-person perspective into the ‘gamespace.’ Drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s concept of embodiment, I will argue that 1) VR is a coping experience, and 2) the VR environment becomes the world of our engagement. This understanding of the VR experience allows us to reassess this technology, showing how it uses bodily action and perception to open up new digitally-mediated possibilities for connection.
January 19, 2023
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Oliver Alexander Tafdrup
Sociotechnical Eudaimonia in a Digital Future Transhumanistic Virtues and Imaginaries of Human Perfectibility in the Danish Technology Education Discourse
first published on January 19, 2023
Through a discourse analysis of core documents related to the development of a new primary school subject titled technology comprehension (TC), this article explores how sociotechnical imaginaries of (trans)human perfectibility are promoted in technology education in Denmark. Based on the idea that transhumanism can be understood as a type of eudemonistic virtue ethics, I argue that TC is shaped by the idea that the purpose of technology education is to prepare pupils for the coming of a future characterised by a profound digital transformation of society and human existence through the cultivation of ‘transhuman virtues’ related to normative—and politically produced—ideas of human perfectibility or, in other words, a sociotechnical eudaimonia. I identify two types of transhuman imaginaries, and thus two versions of sociotechnical eudaimonia, in the discourse of TC: 1) the imaginary of technological extension and 2) the imaginary of technological adaptation.
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Martin Peterson
What Do Technical Functions Supervene On?
first published on January 19, 2023
According to the dual nature thesis, technical artifacts have a dual nature: they are material objects that have a material base, but also functions that depend on their intentional history, in particular their intended and actual use. In an influential paper, Houkes and Meijers argue that the dual nature thesis does not square well with the seemingly plausible idea that the function of a technological artifact supervenes on its material base. They correctly point out that many versions of the supervenience thesis are unable to account for the following two-way underdetermination condition: “an artefact type, as a functional type, is multiply realizable in material structures or systems, while a given material basis can realize a variety of functions” (Houkes and Meijers 2006, 120). In this paper, I articulate a supervenience thesis that is compatible with the two-way underdetermination condition.
January 12, 2023
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Vincent Blok
Technology as Mimesis: Biomimicry as Regenerative Sustainable Design, Engineering, and Technology
first published on January 12, 2023
In this article, we investigate how to explain the difference between traditional design, engineering, and technology—which have exploited nature and put increasing pressure on Earth’s carrying capacity since the industrial revolution—and biomimetic design—which claims to explore nature’s sustainable solutions and promises to be regenerative by design. We reflect on the concept of mimesis. Mimesis assumes a continuity between the natural environment as a regenerative model and measure for sustainable design that is imitated and reproduced in biomimetic design, engineering, and technology. We conceptualize mimesis in terms of two interdependent boundary conditions: differentiation and participation. We subsequently develop four characteristics of biomimicry as regenerative design, engineering, and technology: technological mimesis is 1) a participative differentiation of nature; 2) supplemental to natural mimesis in biomimetic design; 3) the participative differentiation of technological mimesis is constitutive of nature; 4) the participative differentiation of technological mimesis is always limited.
October 25, 2022
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Abigail Nieves Delgado, Laura Kocksch
Privacy in Social Media A Perspective from the Logic of Care
first published on October 25, 2022
Privacy loss is one of the primary issues associated with the use of social media or social network sites. These sites operate by collecting and sharing data from users to obtain economic revenue. As a solution, it is recommended that users be informed about safe online practices and that they should behave accordingly. However, this does not usually happen, which makes privacy regulations ineffective. We argue that a top-down, control-focused approach to privacy, such as that found in the European Commission’s recent General Data Protection Regulation, does not capture the way online practices unfold and fails to prevent privacy issues. Instead, we frame privacy using the concept of the “logic of care,” an approach that promotes a situated analysis of online practices and of the diverse actors involved (users, companies, regulators, etc.). This shift favors the creation of safer interactions on social network sites instead of restrictive regulations.
October 18, 2022
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Johanna Seifert, Orsolya Friedrich, Sebastian Schleidgen
On Humans and Machines Anthropological Considerations on “Intelligent” Neurotechnologies (INTs)
first published on October 18, 2022
In the present article we examine the anthropological implications of “intelligent” neurotechnologies (INTs). For this purpose, we first give an introduction to current developments of INTs by specifying their central characteristics. We then present and discuss traditional anthropological concepts such as the “homo faber,” the concept of humans as “deficient beings,” and the concept of the “cyborg,” questioning their descriptive relevance regarding current neurotechnological applications. To this end, we relate these anthropological concepts to the characteristics of INTs elaborated before. As we show, the explanatory validity of the anthropological concepts analyzed in this article vary significantly. While the concept of the homo faber, for instance, is not capable of adequately describing the anthropological implications of new INTs, the cyborg proves to be capable of grasping several aspects of today’s neurotechnologies. Nevertheless, alternative explanatory models are needed in order to capture the new characteristics of INTs in their full complexity.
September 2, 2022
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Steven Gamboa
Google-car's Extended Mind
first published on September 2, 2022
While the value of the extended mind hypothesis for human cognition is disputed, this paper examines the explanatory utility of the extended mind framework in the domain of AI systems, specifically the Google self-driving car. I argue that the cognitive architecture of the Google-car is best explained as an instance of extended cognition. The argument for this claim begins with a description of the Google-car’s cognitive architecture, including the indispensable role of “prior maps” in its performance. I then argue that the hypothesis of extended cognition provides a better explanation of the Google-car’s performance than two rival, non-extended alternatives. Consideration of the Google-car also offers insight into whether driverless vehicles have achieved human-level competency in the cognitive skills required for driving, or instead remain “poor substitutes.”
August 3, 2022
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Joel Bock
Overcoming Simondonian Alienation A Critique of the Dichotomy between the Psycho-physical and the Politico-economic
first published on August 3, 2022
This paper engages in an interpretation and critique of Simondon’s approach to technical objects through his concept of alienation. I begin with his argument for why the fundamental source of alienation is “psycho-physical” and explain his critique of politico-economic analyses of alienation. I then explain his proposal for reducing alienation by rethinking work as “technical activity.” I then argue that while Simondon’s analyses of the internal functionality of technical objects provide important contributions to the philosophy of technology, he also overemphasizes the psycho-physical and in turn underestimates the role of politico-economic factors in the ontogenesis of technical objects and production of alienation. Both the psycho-physical and politico-economic, I claim, must be thought together as necessarily interconnected conditions of the ontogenesis of technical objects. On that basis, it becomes possible to engage in philosophical critique of and education about the inner functionality of contemporary technologies and their accompanying risks.
July 30, 2022
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Ehsan Arzroomchilar
“Structural Ethics” as a Framework to Study the Moral Role of Non-Humans
first published on July 30, 2022
A challenging issue within the philosophy of technology is the moral relevancy of artifacts. While many philosophers agree that artifacts have moral significance, there are numerous positions on how moral relevancy ought to be understood, ranging from scholars who argue that there is no room for artifacts in moral debates to those who argue for the moral agency of artifacts. In this paper, I attempt to avoid extreme positions; accordingly, I reject both the neutrality thesis and the moral agency of artifacts thesis. Instead, I propose finding a compromise for describing their moral role. In doing so, I take Philip Brey’s idea of developing a new framework, called ‘Structural Ethics,’ as my point of departure. Although the structural ethics proposed by Brey needs some revisions, it may serve as a proper metaethical theory to account for the role of non-humans.
July 14, 2022
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Karolina Kudlek
Challenges in the Human Enhancement Debate A Critical Review
first published on July 14, 2022
The discussion about human enhancement technologies has primarily focused on exchanging views about the dangers and benefits of these interventions. However, the debate could benefit from a systematic attempt to move beyond pro et contra exchange. Thus, in this paper, I analyze key issues in the human enhancement debate, and I outline a set of methodological guidelines that could help to progress future research. I propose that we should pay special attention to the following conditions: (i) whether a particular enhancement project is plausibly coherent, feasible, and effective; (ii) whether it conflicts with fundamental moral values and norms; and (iii) whether it is compatible with or promotes socio-political goals of equality and justice. This approach should help us minimize normative ambiguity and facilitate the moral assessment of different enhancements and their particular applications.
June 7, 2022
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Dina Babushkina
What Does It Mean for a Robot to Be Respectful?
first published on June 7, 2022
Intelligent systems are increasingly incorporated into relationships that had, until recently, been reserved solely for humans, and are delegated the role of a partner, which, if human, would presuppose a system of normatively regulated interactivity. This includes expectations of reciprocity and certain attitudes/actions towards human actors, such as respect. Even though a robot cannot respect, I argue that it can be respectful. A robot can be attributed respectfulness (in the direct sense) iff its interactions with persons reflect the respectful attitude of the humans involved in its design and operation. Robot respectfulness is a compound of (a) robotic actions governed by principles that (b) reflect the attitude of respect for persons by humans involved in its design, implementation, and professional use. I define respect for persons as a commitment to core values that make someone a person (i.e., intellect, rationality of reactive attitudes, autonomy, personal integrity, and trust in expertise).
June 1, 2022
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John Danaher
Technological Change and Human Obsolescence
first published on June 1, 2022
Can human life have value in a world in which humans are rendered obsolete by technological advances? This article answers this question by developing an extended analysis of the axiological impact of human obsolescence. In doing so, it makes four main arguments. First, it argues that human obsolescence is a complex phenomenon that can take on at least four distinct forms. Second, it argues that one of these forms of obsolescence (‘actual-general’ obsolescence) is not a coherent concept and hence not a plausible threat to human well-being. Third, it argues that existing fears of technologically-induced human obsolescence are less compelling than they first appear. Fourth, it argues that there are two reasons for embracing a world of widespread, technologically-induced human obsolescence.
May 12, 2022
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Piercosma Bisconti, Antonio Carnevale
Alienation and Recognition The Δ Phenomenology of the Human–Social Robot Interaction (HSRI)
first published on May 12, 2022
A crucial philosophical problem of social robots is how much they perform a kind of sociality in interacting with humans. Scholarship diverges between those who sustain that humans and social robots cannot by default have social interactions and those who argue for the possibility of an asymmetric sociality. Against this dichotomy, we argue in this paper for a holistic approach called “Δ phenomenology” of HSRI (Human–Social Robot Interaction). In the first part of the paper, we will analyse the semantics of an HSRI. This is what leads a human being (x) to assign or receive a meaning of sociality (z) by interacting with a social robot (y). Hence, we will question the ontological structure underlying HSRIs, suggesting that HSRIs may lead to a peculiar kind of user alienation. By combining all these variables, we will formulate some final recommendations for an ethics of social robots.
May 6, 2022
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Cristiano Cordeiro Cruz
Decolonial Approaches to Technical Design Building Other Possible Worlds and Widening Philosophy of Technology
first published on May 6, 2022
Decolonial approaches to technical design are part of a broader category of design methodologies, which actualize unfulfilled sociotechnical potentialities. In this paper, I present some decolonial theory concepts and discuss three decolonial approaches to illuminate philosophical debates that: 1) Can find in them clear traces of a third set of elements that shape every design/technology, along with the well-analyzed technical-scientific and ethical-political ones. In dialogue with Walter Vincenti and some others, I call these elements structured procedures, imagery lexicon, and aesthetical values, which constitute the central aspects of Eugene Ferguson’s art of engineering; 2) Identify, starting from some Gilbert Simondon’s and Andrew Feenberg’s ideas, any invention as triply situated (in the physical environment, the established sociotechnical reality, and the inventor’s culture and knowledge); 3) Can be taught by these decolonial approaches about some of the mainstream philosophy of technology’s colonial limitations, becoming thus able to widen (or decolonize) it.
April 27, 2022
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Gordon Hull
Infrastructure, Modulation, Portal Thinking with Foucault about how Internet Architecture Shapes Subjects
first published on April 27, 2022
Following Foucault’s remarks on the importance of architecture to disciplinary power, this paper offers a typology of power relations expressed in different models of Internet governance. Infrastructure governance understands the Internet as a common pool or public resource, on the model of traditional infrastructures like roads and bridges. Modulation governance, which I study by way of Net Neutrality debates in the U.S., understands Internet governance as traffic shaping. Portal governance, which I study by way of data collection policies of dominant platform companies, understands the Internet as creating a user experience that facilitates data mining. The latter two are forms of architectural disciplinary power that undermine the first. I then argue that the rise of portal and modulation governance primarily serves to remake parts of civil society by fostering market norms of consumption and entrepreneurialism. In that sense, efforts to shape Internet architecture need to be understood as techniques of subjectification.
April 12, 2022
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Nolen Gertz
Accommodating Ourselves to Death COVID and the Threat of Technological Solutions to Human Crises
first published on April 12, 2022
COVID-19 has created new opportunities for tech companies to supply the world with technological solutions intended to help individuals, communities, and nations maintain normalcy in the midst of disease, death, and destruction. Technologies such as virtual meeting software, coronavirus monitoring apps, and air filtration systems raise the question of whether our technological resiliency is not only helping us to maintain life as it was before, but also preventing us from asking whether we should maintain life as it was before. By comparing Sartre’s analysis of what it was like to live during the Nazi occupation of Paris to current attempts to live during the pandemic, this article investigates how the technological solutions that maintain ordinary life in the midst of catastrophe should lead us to question the catastrophic nature of what we take to be ordinary life.
April 5, 2022
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Alexander Castleton
Postphenomenology or Essentialism? An Exploration of Inuit Commercialization of Country Foods through Facebook
first published on April 5, 2022
Inuit customs establish that food must be shared with the community. For many Inuit, income from wage-work feeds back into the subsistence economy, as money is needed to buy snowmobiles, gas, or rifles to practice harvesting activities. In the last decade, both scholars and journalists have noted that the commercialization of traditional foods (also known as country foods) through Facebook is a current controversy among Inuit. This article will discuss this issue contrasting technological essentialism and postphenomenology. While technological essentialism establishes, from a Heideggerian perspective, that technology transforms reality into pure resource, postphenomenology focuses on describing how technology helps to shape the relations between humans and the world. This article will propose that the commercialization of country foods reflects Facebook’s multistability—that is, the fact that any given technology can present the world in multiple ways.
April 1, 2022
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Jill Drouillard
Feminist Moral Tensions for a Nomadic Subject
first published on April 1, 2022
This article uses the figure of the nomad from the work of Rosi Braidotti to critically examine rhetoric about vaccine and masking mandates, and the science of COVID more broadly. I draw out the tensions and ambivalence felt as we navigate this on-going crisis in ways epitomized by the phrase “I have a healthy mistrust of authority, and I am still vaccinated.” Though ambivalent, the nomadic subject finds an affirmative ethics, navigating the “right” response to incite positive change and expose our current states of subjectivity. Recognizing the ambivalence of this state may be useful for feminists who critique medicine for its historical sexist and racist “objectivism,” while also supporting medical science and trust in the case of vaccine mandates.
December 10, 2021
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Filippo Fabrocini, Kostas Terzidis
Re-framing AI An AI Product Designer Perspective
first published on December 10, 2021
AI is “essentially detached” from the world. The intrinsic nature of this technology precludes a proper space of negotiation between the different human and non-human actors involved and leads to an ideology of control. The challenge of the designer consists in looking across the black box, as opposed to looking inside, in order to visualise, sense, and experience why AI is leading us, and where, and how. These questions are as important as the algorithmic questions. The missing integration between human and artificial intelligence must be compensated for by mechanisms of social governance. These mechanisms should adopt an approach of constructive engagement with the limits of AI through the inclusion of social learning processes involving the different stakeholders, starting with ordinary citizens. Designing a “good” AI means to give up with a de-situated and socially detached understanding for engaging a community of actors while sharing a common concern.
December 3, 2021
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Esther Keymolen
In Search of Friction A New Postphenomenological Lens to Analyze Human-Smartphone Interactions
first published on December 3, 2021
Considering the key mediating role that smartphones play in everyday life, a postphenomenological analysis to better understand how we have power over these devices, how these artifacts empower and simultaneously can overpower us, seems highly relevant. This article will show that in order to engage in such a much-needed postphenomenological analysis, we will first have to address three fundamental, methodological challenges. The first challenge is brought forth by the personalized interface of smartphones, hindering postphenomenologists to unravel the so-called multistability of the device through variational analysis, which typically is an anchoring point in their analysis. The second challenge is that the networked ontology of smartphones disrupts the ideal-typical hermeneutic relationship end-users have with their smartphone. The third, closely related challenge, comes with the general focus of postphenomenology on the everyday life, first-person experience of users, which leaves many, significant stabilities hidden behind the smartphone’s interface.
November 27, 2021
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Hsiang-Yun Chen, Li-an Yu, Linus Ta-Lun Huang
To Mask or Not to Mask Epistemic Injustice in the COVID-19 Pandemic
first published on November 27, 2021
Reluctance to adopt mask-wearing as a preventive measure is widely observed in many Western societies since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemics. This reluctance toward mask adoption, like any other complex social phenomena, will have multiple causes. Plausible explanations have been identified, including political polarization, skepticism about media reports and the authority of public health agencies, and concerns over liberty, amongst others. In this paper, we propose potential explanations hitherto unnoticed, based on the framework of epistemic injustice. We show how testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice may be at work to shape the reluctant mask adoption at both the societal and individual levels. We end by suggesting how overcoming these epistemic injustices can benefit the global community in this challenging situation and in the future.
November 11, 2021
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Dairon Alfonso Rodríguez Ramírez, Jorge Francisco Maldonado Serrano
Causal Cognition and Skillful Tool Use
first published on November 11, 2021
An epistemological account of tool use is fundamental for a better comprehension of technical objects within the philosophy of technology. In this paper, we put forward an answer to the question “What is the role of causal cognition in skillful tool use?” We argue that an interventionist account of causal representation enables us to see how cases of skillful tool use presuppose the acquisition of representations of the causal relationships between direct interventions on a tool and the desired effects. This approach allows us to explain two of the main features of skillful tool use: systematicity and generality.
October 22, 2021
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Rua M. Williams
I, Misfit Empty Fortresses, Social Robots, and Peculiar Relations in Autism Research
first published on October 22, 2021
I draw upon Critical Disability Studies and Race Critical Code Studies to apply an oppositional reading of applied robotics in autism intervention. Roboticists identify care work as a prime legitimizing application for their creations. Popular imagination of robotics in therapeutic or rehabilitative contexts figures the robot as nurse or orderly. Likewise, the dominant narrative tropes of autism are robotic—misfit androids, denizens of the uncanny valley. Diagnostic measures reinforce tropes of autistic uncanniness: monotonous speech, jerky movements, and systematic, over-logical minds. Today, robots are pitched as therapeutic tools to intervene in the social (under)development of autistic children; robots with monotonous voices, jerky, dis-coordinated movements, unsettling affect, and behavior predicated on a system of finite state logic. I present eerie and uneasy connections between the discredited works on autism and selfhood by Bettelheim and contemporary rehabilitative robotics research and imagine possibilities for robotics to divest from legacies of enslavement and policing.
October 13, 2021
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Laetitia Van den Bergen, Robin Van den Akker
Biomimicry and Nature as Sympoiesis A Case Study into Living Machines
first published on October 13, 2021
Formulating how biomimicry relates to nature has been crucial to ‘deepening’ its theory. Currently, an autopoietic model of nature dominates the literature. However, advances in the natural and human sciences have demonstrated that autopoiesis does not adequately explain complex, dynamic, responsive, and situated systems. This article draws on Beth Dempster’s (1998) characterisation of ecosystems as sympoietic, that is as homeorhetic, evolutionary, distributively controlled, unpredictable, and adaptive, and on Donna Jeanne Haraway’s (2016) critique that entities do not pre-exist their relationships. We argue that using sympoietic processes of becoming as our model, measure, and mentor impacts biomimicry’s practice and relation to sustainability. Taking John Todd’s Living Machines as a case study, we explicate how sympoiesis unfurls autopoiesis. By integrating advances in the natural and human sciences into the philosophy of biomimicry, we address the limitations of the autopoietic model and provide a more comprehensive and adequate model of ‘nature.’
September 29, 2021
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Cora Olson, Claire Simpson
Race The American Trajectory of an Aimless Disease
first published on September 29, 2021
We argue that dominant white cultural views and public health co-produce race as a technology that charts the path of viral transmission away from the white bodies to form a trajectory for an otherwise aimless disease. This epistemological project is one enmeshed in popular culture, medical practice, and biopolitics. COVID-19 and the related Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement work together to make visible the narrative technologies. This project contributes to understanding race and public health as co-constituted in ways that shape imaginative possibilities, material and agential realties, and health outcomes in light of COVID-19. Our argument is novel in naming race a technology of American public health and taking up Coeckelbergh and Reijers’ call for a normative theory of narrative technology. We extend Coeckelbergh and Reijers’ narrative technologies to include race, a narrative artifact, co-produced by biology, public health, and individual actors.
July 27, 2021
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Johannes F. M. Schick
The Potency of Open Objects (Re-)Inventing New Modes of Being Human in the Digital Age with Bergson, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, and Simondon
first published on July 27, 2021
This essay researches the relation of the human being to technology in the Digital Age, employing the philosophies of Henri Bergson, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, and Gilbert Simondon. These conceptions allow for a critique of the quasi-religious belief in Singularity in the transhuman discourse of Artificial Intelligence and its underlying ontology. This ontology is based upon the belief that the world is predictable and computable. To develop a symmetrical relationship with technology in the digital age, I will argue for an ontological model of participation and novelty that conceives of living beings as constantly inventing and re-inventing new modes of being. Being human means to reinvents itself constantly by diachronically relating to its own contemporary condition as well as to the tool making origins of mankind. It implies that the technical objects have to be open in order to create a symmetrical relation with them.
June 12, 2021
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Victoria Dos Santos, Humberto Valdivieso
The Contemporary Cyborg A Semiotic Approach to Digital Hybridization
first published on June 12, 2021
The aim of this article is to study and explore the cyborg as a metaphoric figure, as well as its semiotic correlation with the contemporary subject, an entity moving through a society developed by digital technologies. The cyborg paradigm is formed by the unification of existing dichotomies between human-machine, nature-culture, and science-magic, disrupting transcendental dualisms and fixed categories. These phenomena can be understood through the concept of intertextuality developed first by Julia Kristeva and then by Roland Barthes, both using the cyborg body as a textual construction, and through Donna Haraway’s theory, which understands cyborgs as an indexical consequence of digital mediation in human society.
June 11, 2021
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Natalia Juchniewicz
Extended Memory On Delegation of Memory to Smartphones
first published on June 11, 2021
This article raises the problem of extended memory in the context of using a smartphone. Taking into account the extended mind hypothesis and the everyday practices of smartphone users, the article analyses four fields of memory: pictures, chats, maps and, geolocating games. Each of these fields can be used in a number of ways to reinforce memory or to participate in the memory practices of an individual or a collectivity, and this is analysed in the article using numerous examples. The problem of extended memory is considered in the article on a theoretical level by referring to new media studies (on mobile phones and iPhones). The practical dimension of this problem is presented by the results of empirical, qualitative research conducted among smartphone users.
June 9, 2021
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Jared L. Talley
Computer Generated Media and Experiential Impact on our Imaginations
first published on June 9, 2021
The human imagination is puzzling. Barring extreme cases, every person has an intimate relationship with their own imagination and although the constitution of that relationship may itself be obscure, we should not assume that it is thus inconsequential. This raises the salient question of this essay: How is imagination consequential? I develop an account of the imagination that helps to evaluate the impact of digital manipulation through Computer Generated Media on our imaginations, especially as it occurs in media-saturated societies. This essay proceeds in four parts. First, I briefly develop an account of the imagination that serves this evaluation. Second, I describe how digital technology is able to impact our imaginations. Third, I explore the impacts that this has on our imaginations—what I label the horizontal and vertical stretching of our imaginations. Lastly, I consider plausible consequences of stretching our imaginations with digital technologies.
May 4, 2021
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Tiger Roholt
Being-with Smartphones
first published on May 4, 2021
In a social situation, why is it sometimes off-putting when a person reaches for his smartphone? In small-group contexts such as a college seminar, a business meeting, a family meal, or a small musical performance, when a person begins texting or interacting with social media on a smartphone he may disengage from the group. When we do find this off-putting, we typically consider it to be just impolite or inappropriate. In this essay, I argue that something more profound is at stake. One significant way in which individuals shape their self-identities is through interactions with others in small groups. Much identity-work is interdependent; it requires generating and preserving social contexts. I argue that the smartphone-use of some individuals can fracture a group’s context and thus negatively affect the identity-work of others. In this essay, I examine identity-work, sociality, and personal technology from a perspective of existential phenomenology.
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Siby K. George
Heidegger, Technology, and Biohistorical Human Futures
first published on May 4, 2021
Posthumanist readings of the Heidegger corpus often conclude that the transformed future human essence must either be the ecoromanticist ideal of the attuned dweller or the technoprogressivist ideal of the technicized animal. Such inferences are untenable according to the logic of the text, where human essence is envisaged as radically unfixed and open, and humans themselves as meaningful contributors to their future essence. In this way, the transformation of human essence can become a genuinely ethicopolitical question, rather than an ontologically predetermined one. An ontologically open posthumanist and biohistorical reading of the Heidegger corpus concerning the human future is possible if focus is placed on the logic of the text itself rather than authorial intentions.
April 29, 2021
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Ryan Wittingslow
The COVID-19 Pandemic qua Artefact
first published on April 29, 2021
In this article I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is an unintended artefact with emergent features. Not only is the pandemic an accidental consequence of human agency, it also a) emerges from but is not reducible to its basal features, and b) possesses the features of radical novelty, coherence, wholeness, dynamism, ostensiveness, and downwards causation.
April 27, 2021
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Regletto Aldrich D. Imbong
On Transistor Radios and Authoritarianism The Politics of Radio-Broadcasted Distance Learning
first published on April 27, 2021
As the Philippines continues to grapple with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, new modalities of instruction are being devised by the administration of Rodrigo Duterte, through the Department of Education (DepEd). Among these are what the DepEd provided as self-learning modules (SLMs) combined with “alternative learning delivery modalities” which include radio-based instruction (DepEd 2020). The SLMs and radiobased instruction are the most common modalities of learning, being the most accessible especially for the poor students of the country. This paper will examine the pedagogical and political dimensions of a radio-based instruction. Coming from the tradition of philosophy of technology that emphasizes the political nature of technology, I will argue how the logic of radio broadcasting predetermines a specific pedagogy and form of communication. I will further argue how this predetermined form of communication carries the danger of being an effective support for authoritarianism.
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Luca M. Possati
Making the Invisible Visible The Phenomenon of Data Visualization as a Framework to Understand How Software Shapes the Imaginary and the Image
first published on April 27, 2021
In today’s society the use of new technologies for data visualizations is becoming increasingly widespread. This article seeks neither to give a complete view of its history nor an exhaustive definition of the phenomenon of data visualization. This article takes a new perspective on data visualization by dealing only with a new type of data visualizations, those based on “Big Data” and AI systems. This perspective is completely different from existing ones. Therefore, I explore three main theses: (a) that AI systems applied to large amounts of data that we cannot directly know (so-called “Big Data”) can create “living” and interactive images with a multifaceted nature and efficacy (epistemic, phenomenal, and subjective); (b) that this new type of data visualizations is deeply linked to the so-called “iconic turn” trend in the field of social sciences because many of the theses of the “iconic turn” are confirmed and even reinforced by these data visualizations; (c) that through the production of “living” images, digital technologies demonstrate their ability to re-define and re-configure our experience and re-ontologize reality by creating new entities requiring new philosophical tools to be fully understood. I focus mainly on this third thesis by stressing the hermeneutical function of data visualization.
March 2, 2021
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Ryan Jenkins, Zachary I. Rentz, Keith Abney
Big Brother Goes to School Best Practices for Campus Surveillance Technologies During the COVID-19 Pandemic
first published on March 2, 2021
Few sectors are more affected by COVID-19 than higher education. There is growing recognition that reopening the densely populated communities of higher education will require surveillance technologies, but many of these technologies pose threats to the privacy of the very students, faculty, and staff they are meant to protect. The authors have a history of working with our institution’s governing bodies to provide ethical guidance on the use of technologies, especially including those with significant implications for privacy. Here, we draw on that experience to provide guidelines for using surveillance technologies to reopen college campuses safely and responsibly, even under the specter of covid. We aim to generalize our recommendations, so they are sensitive to the practical realities and constraints that universities face.
February 18, 2021
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Shane Epting
Urban Infrastructure and the Problem of Moral Praise
first published on February 18, 2021
Most components of urban infrastructure remain hidden. Due to this condition, we do not think about them in a way that pays attention to the full scope of moral possibilities. For instance, when such topics are forced from the periphery of our thinking to the forefront of our minds, it is usually in terms of figuring out who to blame when they fail to function properly. In turn, one could argue that we only care to talk about an action’s moral status that pertains to infrastructure when it becomes a hazard. While this point deserves examination, the more significant issue is that we lack the moral language required to have conversations about moral praise regarding public works. The purpose of this paper, then, is to flesh out how to discuss morality and infrastructure regarding moral praise.
January 30, 2021
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Thomas Lee
Cultures of Number
first published on January 30, 2021
This article argues humanities scholarship is often dismissive of the quantitative, and that there is scope for worthwhile interdisciplinary research into the way everyday life is given tone and texture by experiences and cultures of number. Following the work of Mary Poovey (2008) and Steven Connor (2016), it challenges the view, particularly influential in the humanities, that number and associated ideas to do with data, objectivity, mathematics, and the rational, are parasitic upon life. In contrast to this view, this article suggests that even if the idea of ‘the human’ is defined in opposition to number, the relation between the two is more usefully understood as an interweaving of differential tensions, rather than two poles separated by an uncrossable distance. Examples from literary fiction and two smartphone apps are analysed with the intent of initiating a dialogue between different cultural objects that share a concern with number and human experience.
January 26, 2021
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Levi Checketts
The Sacrality of Things On the Technological Augmentation of the Sacred
first published on January 26, 2021
Abstract: Mitcham, Borgmann, and others argue the character of technology is at odds with the character of Christian life. This paper challenges that claim in two moves. First, I examine ways Christian theology has been formed by Roman crucifixion, the printing press, and transoceanic navigation; Christology, biblical studies, and missiology are critically dependent upon technologies that facilitated the death of Jesus, the spread of Protestant literature, and the migration of missionaries. Second, I contend that these technologies shed light on a complicated relationship between the realm of the “sacred” and technologies. Technologies can have the character of being sacred or sacramental. As sacred, technologies fall within the purview of religious devotion like relics or icons. As sacramental, they influence the field of theology, through augmentation or restriction. Thus, technologies can be compatible with Christianity and have a positive effect on religion, expanding the fields of theological reflection and religious devotion.
January 24, 2021
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Luca M. Possati
Is There a Digital World? Video Games as a Framework for Analyzing the Relations between Software and Lived Experience
first published on January 24, 2021
This article discusses the relation between software and human experience. I argue that software-based experiences are based on a radical discrepancy between the code and “lived experience.” This break is different than the so-called “opacity” of technology. I start analyzing a case study: the video game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Video games are one of the most profound digital experiences humans can have. When I play a video game I do not see the code. However, the code is the source of my experience. I claim that the code’s concealment is the necessary condition of the digital experience. I discuss the ontological definition of software as an entity. Software, I claim, is a complex object, composed of many different levels, whose unity is problematic. In the last part of the essay I argue that the break between lived experience and code is recomposed by imagination through the act of design.
January 22, 2021
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Galit Wellner
The Zoom-bie Student and the Lecturer
first published on January 22, 2021
As part of the Special Section: Technology & Pandemic, this article examines the experience of teaching and learning via Zoom. I examine how technologies mediate the learning process with the postphenomenological notions of embodiment and hermeneutic relations. This section serves as a basis for understanding the transformation of that process into online learning. The next section is named “the Zoom-bie”—a combination of the words Zoom and zombie. The figure of the Zoom-bie provides me a way to critically review the new practices experienced in the spring semester of 2020. After analyzing the variations of the learning process with a fresh look at embodiment and hermeneutic relations, the last section titled “the digital classroom” examines this transformation from an alternative point-of-view, that of the classroom as a technology-saturated background.
October 13, 2020
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Vincent Blok
What Is Innovation?
first published on October 13, 2020
In this article, I reflect on the nature of innovation to lay the groundwork for a philosophy of innovation. First, I contrast the contemporary techno-economic paradigm of innovation with the work of Joseph Schumpeter. It becomes clear that Schumpeter’s work provides good reasons to question the techno-economic paradigm of innovation. Second, I contrast ‘innovation’ with ‘technology’ and identify five differences between the two concepts. Third, I reflect on the process-outcome dimension and the ontic-ontological dimension of innovation to develop four characteristics of the phenomenon of innovation. These four characteristics move beyond the techno-economic paradigm of innovation and highlight, first, the importance of its process dimension understood as ontogenesis, second, the outcome of innovation, and third, the importance of the ontological dimension of innovation, which is considered adjacent to its fourth characteristic, i.e., the ontic level of the outcome of innovation. After drawing conclusions, a research agenda for future research is provided.
August 11, 2020
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Bonnie Sheehey
Ethics Beyond Transparency Resisting the Racial Injustice of Predictive Policing
first published on August 11, 2020
This paper responds to recent work highlighting the problematic racial politics of predictive policing technologies. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s account of ethics as counter-conduct, I develop a set of ethical techniques for resisting the racial injustice at work in predictive policing. This framework has the advantage, I argue, of not reducing the ethical issues of predictive policing solely to epistemic concerns of transparency. What I suggest is that we think about the ethics of technology less as an epistemic problem than as a problem for action or practice. By thinking of ethics in terms of resistant practices, we can begin to consider a notion of responsibility that holds us and the technologies we bind ourselves to accountable for the harms created by this bond.
August 4, 2020
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Ryan Wittingslow
Effing the Ineffable The Sublime in Postphenomenology
first published on August 4, 2020
Motivating this article is an interest in how postphenomenological technical relations participate in aesthetic experiences. Introducing aesthetic experience into our analyses of technical relations allows us to better tease apart the distinction between our relationship with the artefact, and how we experience that relationship. However, the sublime poses a unique set of complications for postphenomenologists. Thanks to the overwhelming qualities of the sublime, it is unclear where sublimity fits within the Ihdean relational taxonomy—or indeed, if it can at all, given that sublime experience would in principle overwhelm and dissolve the extant relation. This article resolves this apparent tension, and offers an accounts of how sublime experience is able to be reconciled with Ihdean postphenomenology.
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Dario Rodighiero, Alberto Romele
The Hermeneutic Circle of Data Visualization The Case Study of the Affinity Map
first published on August 4, 2020
In this article, we show how postphenomenology can be used to analyze the Affinity Map: a data visualization that reveals the hidden dynamics that exist between individuals within large organizations. We make use of the Affinity Map to expand the classic postphenomenology that privileges a ‘linear’ understanding of technological mediations and introduce the notions of ‘iterativity’ and ‘collectivity.’ In the first section of the paper, we discuss both classic and more recent descriptions of human-technology-world relations in order to transcendentally approach the discipline of data visualization. In the second section, we use the Affinity Map case study to consider three elements: 1) the collection of data and the design process; 2) the visual grammar of the data visualization, and 3) the process of self-recognition for the map ‘reader.’ In the third section, we introduce the hermeneutic circle of data visualization. Finally, we suggest that the Affinity Map, because of its ethical and political multistability, might be seen as a material encounter between postphenomenology, actor-network theory (ANT), and hermeneutics.
August 2, 2020
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Shachar Freddy Kislev
Six Hegelian Theses about Technology
first published on August 2, 2020
Hegel has long been considered a major thinker of progress. This paper extends Hegel’s philosophy of progress into an outline of a philosophy of technology. It does this not by directly reading the little Hegel wrote on the subject, but by introducing six central Hegelian ideas that bear on the technological thought. It argues that, for Hegel, (1) mankind is destined to change its destiny; (2) that true change involved qualitative change; (3) that true change is conceptual, and not material, change; (4) that history progresses immanently according to its own laws; (5) that history progresses towards ever greater artificiality; and that (6) artificiality is closely linked to freedom. These ideas cohere into a Hegelian metaphysics of technology, which is supportive of the technological enterprise. This paper is meant both to sketch a metaphysical understanding of the technological enterprise, and to trace the intellectual roots of contemporary technological utopianism.
May 19, 2020
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Lisa Nelson
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
first published on May 19, 2020
There is little debate that there are important ethical questions that we must answer as we increase our reliance on social networking technologies such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for our communications, interactions and connections. Social media is at the center of many of our greatest public policy challenges but the moral (or immoral) role it plays in relation to human behavior is far from settled. Part of the difficulty we face in addressing the unique challenges of social networking technologies is discerning the significance of social networking on us. This is because we often begin with an erroneous assumption. The moral significance of technologies generally—not only social networking technologies—is hampered by the insistence that technologies are typically considered objects and we are human, and the province of morality has long been ours. Postphenomenological inquiries can help to fashion technological development in pursuit of understanding how our moral behavior takes shape, but we can also take a critical perspective on who we are and what we are becoming in light of what social networking technologies reveal about the state of our ontological Being.
April 14, 2020
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Billy Wheeler
Reliabilism and the Testimony of Robots
first published on April 14, 2020
We are becoming increasingly dependent on robots and other forms of artificial intelligence for our beliefs. But how should the knowledge gained from the “say-so” of a robot be classified? Should it be understood as testimonial knowledge, similar to knowledge gained in conversation with another person? Or should it be understood as a form of instrument-based knowledge, such as that gained from a calculator or a sundial? There is more at stake here than terminology, for how we treat objects as sources of knowledge often has important social and legal consequences. In this paper, I argue that at least some robots are capable of testimony. I make my argument by exploring the differences between instruments and testifiers on a well-known account of knowledge: reliabilism. On this approach, I claim that the difference between instruments and testifiers as sources of knowledge is that only the latter are capable of deception. As some robots can be designed to deceive, so they too should be recognized as testimonial sources of knowledge.
April 1, 2020
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Tom Børsen
Bridging Critical Constructivism and Postphenomenology at Techno-Anthropology
first published on April 1, 2020
Both postphenomenology and critical constructivism are central paradigms used as philosophies and theoretical resources at the Master’s program in Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University. In the fall of 2018 a didactical experiment was set up as Techno-Anthropology Master’s students were introduced to postphenomenology and critical constructivism and asked to compare these two theoretical positions. This comparative assignment and following class discussions between students, a guest lecturer and teachers is the point of departure for this paper. First, the paper introduces Techno-Anthropology with a special focus on the roles of postphenomenology and critical constructivism in the Master’s program. The next part of the paper zooms in on how these two philosophical positions were presented to the students. The third part analyzes students’ comparisons of postphenomenology and critical constructivism. On that basis, the author identifies similarities and differences between the two positions and discusses how the two positions can complement each other in a unified Techno-Anthropological research strategy.
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