We live in a world where it is impossible to exist without, and beyond, technologies. Despite this omnipresence, we tend to overlook their influence on us. The vigorously developing approach of postphenomenology, combining insights from phenomenology and pragmatism, focuses on the so-called technological mediation, i.e., on how technologies as mediators of human-world relations influence the appearing of both the world and the human beings in it. My analysis aims at demonstrating both the methodological weaknesses and open possibilities of postphenomenology. After (...) summarizing its essentials, I will scrutinize, first, its ability to turn to the technological things themselves and, second, the so-called empirical turn as realized by postphenomenology. By assessing its conceptual framework from the phenomenological perspective, I hope to demonstrate that postphenomenology needs philosophical clarification and strengthening. In short, it needs a more phenomenological, and less pragmatic, approach to technology in its influence on human experience. (shrink)

In this commentary, I scrutinize Coeckelbergh’s criticism of postphenomenology, and question whether postphenomenology indeed tends to neglect the social dimension of technology use (ontic), and must necessarily be conceived as being in opposition to transcendental philosophy (ontological). Second, I suggest that the Wittgensteinian concepts that Coeckelbergh introduces are interesting additions to the concepts used in postphenomenology, but that his use of the term “transcendental” seems up to now primarily to be a rhetorical means enabling him to distance himself from postphenomenology.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence, such as large language models and text-to-image models, has had a profound impact on society. The ability of these systems to simulate human capabilities such as text writing and image creation is radically redefining a wide range of practices, from artistic production to education. While there is no doubt that these innovations are beneficial to our lives, the pervasiveness of these technologies should not be underestimated, and raising increasingly pressing ethical questions that require a (...) radical resemantization of certain notions traditionally ascribed to humans alone. Among these notions, that of technological intentionality plays a central role. With regard to this notion, this paper first aims to highlight what we propose to define in terms of the intentionality gap, whereby, insofar as, currently, (1) it is increasingly difficult to assign responsibility for the actions performed by AI systems to humans, as these systems are increasingly autonomous, and (2) it is increasingly complex to reconstruct the reasoning behind the results they produce as we move away from good old fashioned AI; it is now even more difficult to trace the intentionality of AI systems back to the intentions of the developers and end users. This gap between human and technological intentionality requires a revision of the concept of intentionality; to this end, we propose here to assign preter-intentional behavior to generative AI. We use this term to highlight how AI intentionality both incorporates and transcends human intentionality; i.e., it goes beyond (preter) human intentionality while being linked to it. To show the merits of this notion, we first rule out the possibility that such preter-intentionality is merely an unintended consequence and then explore its nature by comparing it with some paradigmatic notions of technological intentionality present in the wider debate on the moral (and technological) status of AI. (shrink)