This response briefly argues that post-phenomenology has always cut across the transcendental-empirical divide and is able to cultivate a deep respect for technologies in their otherness, without denying their relation to humanity. It does this by revisiting Don Ihde’s genetic phenomenological variations and tracing its relation to Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenesis. Having set up the historical nature of objects, the second part of this paper will take up Yoni Van Den Eede’s call for a more speculative approach.

Fitness apps on mobile devices are gaining popularity, as more people are engaging in self-tracking activities to record their status of fitness and exercise routines. These technologies also evolved from simply recording steps and offering exercise suggestions to an integrated lifestyle guide for physical wellbeing, thus exemplify a new era of "quantified self" in the context of health as individual responsibility. There is a considerable amount of literature in science, technology and society (STS) studies looking at this phenomenon from different (...) perspectives, linking it with the sociology of self-surveillance and neoliberal regimes of health. However, the human-technology interface, through which the micro- (behavioral) and macro- (social) aspects converge, still calls for extensive examination. This paper approaches this topic from the postphenomenological perspective, in combination with empirical studies of design analysis and interviews of fitness apps, to reveal the human-technology link between the design elements and people's perception through the direct experiences and interpretations of technology. It argues that the intentionality of self-tracking fitness app designs mediates the human-technology relations by "guiding" people into a quantified knowledge regime. It shapes the perceptions of fitness and health with representations of meanings about a "good life" of individual success and management. This paper also gives a critique of current individual, performance-oriented fitness app designs and offers the possibility of seeking alternatives through the multistable nature of human-technology relations—how altering interpretation and meaning of the design with a cultural or social context could change the form of technological embodiment. (shrink)

Information and communication technology is changing many aspects ofhuman endeavour and existence. This is beyond dispute for most. Whatare contested are the social and ethical implications of thesechanges. Possible sources of these disputes are the multiple ways inwhich one can conceptualize and interpret the informationtechnology/society interrelationship. Each of these ways ofconceptualization and interpretation enables one to see theinformation technology/society relationship differently and thereforeconstrue its social and ethical implications in a different manner. Atthe center of this technology/society interrelationship we find manycomplex (...) questions about the nature of the human, the technical,agency, autonomy, freedom and much more. This is indeed a vastintellectual landscape, which can obviously not be explored here inits fullness. This entry is about just one particular perspective onthis landscape. It is primarily concerned with the phenomenologicalapproach to interpreting information technology and its social andethical implications. It should be noted from the start that there isnot a unified phenomenological tradition or approach to informationtechnology in particular, or other phenomena more generally. Thephenomenological tradition consists of many different approaches thatshare certain characteristics but not all. We may however suggest, with Don Ihde,that they all accept that “phenomenology investigates theconditions of what makes things appear as such [as that which we takethem to be].” Differently stated, phenomenology suggests thatthere is a co-constitutive relationship between us and the phenomenawe encounter in our engagement with the world. In this sensephenomenologists would suggest that to understand thetechnology/society relationship we need to reveal how theyco-constitute each other—i.e. draw on each other for theirongoing meaning and sense. We will elaborate more precisely what thismeans in section 2 below. However, in order to understand the distinctiveness of thephenomenological approach other possible ways of interpreting thistechnology/society relationship will also be outlined brieflybelow., It can be said that information technology has become in a very realsense ubiquitous. Most everyday technologies such as elevators,automobiles, microwaves, watches, and so forth depend onmicroprocessors for their ongoing operation. Most organizations andinstitutions have become reliant on their information technologyinfrastructure to a lesser or greater degree. Indeed informationtechnology is seen by many as a cost-efficient way to solve amultitude of problems facing our complex contemporary society. One canalmost say that information technology has become construed as thedefault technology for solving a whole raft of technical and socialproblems such as health provision, security, governance, etc. Onecould also argue that it has become synonymous with society’sview of modernization and progress. For most it seems obvious thatinformation technology has made it possible for humans to continue toconstruct increasingly complex systems of coordination and socialordering—systems without which contemporary society would not beable to exist in its present form. To say the least, we, ascontemporary human beings, have our manner of being made possiblethrough a rather comprehensive entanglement with information andcommunication technology. Indeed, the economic, organizational andsocial benefit of information technology is not widely disputed. Thedispute is more often about the way information technology is changingor transforming the social domain, and in particular, the ethicaldomain. This dispute is largely centered around different ways ofconceptualizing and interpreting the nature of our entanglement withinformation technology. This debate is not merely an academic debateabout different and competing theoretical ‘models.’Rather, these different ways of conceptualizing it is central to ourunderstanding of how we go about managing our increasingly entangledrelationship with information technology. (shrink)

Technological artefacts have, in recent years, invited increasingly intimate ways of interaction. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to how such interactions, like with wearable devices or household robots, shape our minds, cognitive capacities, and moral character. In this thesis, I develop an embodied, enactive account of mind--technology interaction that takes the reciprocal influence of artefacts on minds seriously. First, I examine how recent developments in philosophy of technology can inform the phenomenology of mind--technology interaction as seen through an (...) enactivist lens. Second, I show how an enactive account of remembering can improve operationalizations of the memory palace mnemonic through virtual reality devices. Third, I draw on virtue ethics to argue that an enactivist approach allows us to better grasp the morally shaping aspects of artefacts by looking at social robots. Fourth, I fend off an underlying metaphysical concern about enactivism by arguing that an embodied, enactive account is compatible with the multiple realization of cognitive processes. This principle is often seen as a crucial test favouring accounts such as extended functionalism over enactivism and I argue that some forms of enactivism pass this test as well. Finally, I conclude by considering what the future relationship between enactivism and functionalism may have in store for the study of mind--technology interaction. (shrink)

The telepresence experience can be evoked in a number of ways. A well-known example is a player of videogames who reports about a telepresence experience, a subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when physically situated in another place. In this paper we set the phenomenon of telepresence into a theoretical framework. As people react subjectively to stimuli from telepresence, empirical studies can give more evidence about the phenomenon. Thus, our contribution is to bridge the theoretical with (...) the empirical. We discuss theories of perception with an emphasis on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Gibson, the role of the senses and the Spinozian belief procedure. The aim is to contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon. A telepresence-study that included the affordance concept is used to empirically study how players report sense-reactions to virtual sightseeing in two cities. We investigate and explore the interplay of the philosophical and the empirical. The findings indicate that it is not only the visual sense that plays a role in this experience, but all senses. (shrink)

Based on insights of phenomenology, this article aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of embodied space and place of and for leader- and followership in organisations. From an interrelational perspective, the “spacing” and implacement of leadership and followership will be interpreted as local-historical and as local-cultural processes. Linked to questions of distance of leadership, embodied face-to-face interaction will be critically compared with distant, non-localised, displaced relationships and tele-presence mediated by information and communication technology. In addition to outlining some links (...) to “potential space” and place-responsiveness by concluding some implications, problems and perspectives on research of embodied space and place forleadership in organisation are discussed. (shrink)

In this article I propose that a postphenomenological approach to science and technology can open new analytical understandings of how material artifacts, embodiment and social agency co-produce learned perceptions of objects. In particle physics, physicists work in huge groups of scientists from many cultural backgrounds. Communication to some extent depends on material hermeneutics of flowcharts, models and other visual presentations. As it appears in an examination of physicists’ scrutiny of visual renderings of different parts of a detector, perceptions vary in (...) relation to social and bodily experiences. Vision in physics has seemingly allowed an objective perception at a convenient distance of the body. This article challenges this view and proposes that the variations can be analysed as cultural at two echelons with the help of a postphenomenological approach combined with cultural psychological theory of artifacts. A third echelon presumably constitutes the phenomenological limit to culture in science. Even this last resort of subjectivity can be embraced by a postphenomenological approach. The process of culturalization in physics can be defined as a process of situating knowledge in a body whose continuous learning of micro-and macro perceptions makes scientific renderings unstable. Taken together postphenomenology, following the distinctions between body one and body two, and combined with cultural psychological learning theory, enables new insight into what constitutes culture in science. (shrink)

This reflection focuses on lived experience with the Technological Other (Quasi-Other) while pursuing creative video and film activities. In the last decade work in the video and film industries has been transformed through digital manipulation and enhancement brought about by increasingly sophisticated computer technologies. The rules of the craft have not changed but the relationship the artist/editor experiences with these new digital tools has brought about increasingly interesting existential experiences in the creative process. How might this new way of being (...) with technology change the craft and the crafter? Through a phenomenological understanding of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Don Ihde, and their contributions to the human-technology conversation, this essay moves to reveal the lived experiences of artists/editors who use computers to create by means of film and digital video formats. Exploring notions of lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived relation through the computer interface allows for digging deeper into inhabiting technology and experiencing the Technological Other. (shrink)

One of us coined the notion of an “epistemology engine.” The idea is that some particular technology in its workings and use is seen suggestively as a metaphor for the human subject and often for the production of knowledge itself. In this essay, we further develop the conceptand claim that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological commitments, although suggestive, did not lead him to appreciate the epistemological value of materiality. We also take steps towards establishing how an understanding of this topic can provide the (...) basis for reinterpreting the history of phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper seeks to illuminate the experiential structures implied in the viewing of televangelistic programming – with particular focus on programming of the charismatic faith-healing variety that culminates in the televangelist’s appeal to viewers to “touch the screen” and consummate a communion that transcends the separation implied by the televisual medium. By way of a “techno-phenomenological” analysis of this marginal media scenario, faith-healing televangelism is shown to involve experiential paradoxes that are tied to processes of social marginalization as well. Thus, (...) it is argued, faith-healing televangelism functions as a call to viewers to mount a head-on confrontation with the technological infrastructure of secular modernity and thereby to effect a specifically material negotiation of evangelical culture’s precarious balancing act between an entrenchment in and a self-marginalization from the secular mainstream. (shrink)

Donna Haraway's enduring question—“Why should our bodies end at the skin?” —is ever more relevant in the postmodern era, where issues of bodies, boundaries, and technologies increasingly challenge not only the normative performance of the human subject, but also the very understanding of what counts as human. Critical Disability Studies has taken up the problematic of technology, particularly in relation to the deployment of prostheses by people with disabilities. Yet rehabilitation to normative practice or appearance is no longer the point; (...) instead, the lived experience of disability generates its own specific possibilities that both limit and extend the performativity of the embodied self. I look at what is at stake in the challenge to the Western logos that comes specifically from the capacities of the disabled body, understood not as a less than perfect form of the normative, but as figuring difference in a nonbinary sense. Feminist theory has long contested the isomorphism of the logos, but I go beyond simply setting out the grounds for revaluing multiple variant forms. The feminist turn to Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze opens up the problematic to a celebratory positioning of difference and transcorporeality as the very conditions of life. (shrink)

In their 2007 paper, Swierstra and Rip identify characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation in the debate about the ethics of new and emerging science and technologies (or “NEST-ethics”). Taking their NEST-ethics structure as a starting point, we considered the debate about tissue engineering (TE), and argue what aspects we think ought to be a part of a rich and high-quality debate of TE. The debate surrounding TE seems to be predominantly a debate among experts. When considering the NEST-ethics (...) arguments that deal directly with technology, we can generally conclude that consequentialist arguments are by far the most prominently featured in discussions of TE. In addition, many papers discuss principles, rights and duties relevant to aspects of TE, both in a positive and in a critical sense. Justice arguments are only sporadically made, some “good life” arguments are used, others less so (such as the explicit articulation of perceived limits, or the technology as a technological fix for a social problem). Missing topics in the discussion, at least from the perspective of NEST-ethics, are second “level” arguments—those referring to techno-moral change connected to tissue engineering. Currently, the discussion about tissue engineering mostly focuses on its so-called “hard impacts”—quantifiable risks and benefits of the technology. Its “soft impacts”—effects that cannot easily be quantified, such as changes to experience, habits and perceptions, should receive more attention. (shrink)

The article proposes to model the phenomenon of the cell phone as a wall-window. This model aims at explicating some of the perceptions and experiences associated with cellular technology. The wall-window model means that the cell phone simultaneously separates the user from the physical surroundings (the wall), and connects the user to a remote space (the window). The remote space may be where the interlocutor resides or where information is stored (e.g. the Internet). Most cell phone usage patterns are modeled (...) as a single dimension according to the level of distraction or attention of the user. In order to accommodate nuanced situations such as augmented reality, I suggest a two-dimensional layout: the wall-window. The wall represents the attention to the immediate physical environment, while the window represents the attention to a remote space. The wall-window model further evolves once a screen is woven into this layout. This addition is easily understood due to the screen’s etymology, which is associated with the concepts of shield or barrier. From a technical perspective, the screen has become an integral part of the cell phone. Furthermore, a screen itself is both a wall and a window. Lastly, once a cell phone is supplemented with a screen, it is easier to refer to it as media. And again, media fits into the wall-window model. (shrink)

Taken together, the commentaries by Sigrid Merx and Tom Paulus suggest a remarkable dialectical relationship with regard to our article “Performing Phenomenology: Negotiating Presence in Intermedial Theatre”. On the one side a lack of elaborated political consciousness is being detected, while on the other side an alleged surplus of political consciousness is being criticized. Although apparently contradictory, these reactions seem to originate in the same ideological stress: both are somehow haunted by the legacy of Bertolt Brecht and the ideology of (...) the image implicit in critical theory. We argue that the tension between illusion and deconstruction indeed is crucial to the history of the mediatized image, but that it should be taken to a deeper level where it not only remains unsolved but where it forms the heart of the experience. The user knows very well that she is being fooled and, moreover, generously lets herself being fooled. We historicize this fundamental ambivalence with a short excursion in pre-cinematic, pre-Brechtian times. Throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth century, periodic shifts between illusion and its suspension indicates the emergence of what we, in the digital era, might refer to as a ‘meta-realism’, an imagery that incorporates its own critique inside itself. If this analysis holds true, we eventually have to reformulate the stakes of deconstruction and push critical theory beyond its own borders. (shrink)

Modern technology has enabled the use of new forms of information in the care of critically ill patients. In intensive care units (ICUs), technology can simultaneously reduce the lived experience of illness and magnify the objective dimensions of patient care. The aim of this study, based upon two empirical studies, is to find from a philosophical point of view a more comprehensive understanding for the dominance of technology within intensive care. Along with caring for critically ill patients, technology is part (...) of the ICU staff's everyday life. Both technology and caring relationships are of indispensable value. Tools are useful, but technology can never replace the closeness and empathy of the human touch. It is a question of harmonizing the demands of subjectivity with objective signs. The challenge for caregivers in ICU is to know when to heighten the importance of the objective and measurable dimensions provided by technology and when to magnify the patients’ lived experiences, and to live and deal with the ambiguity of the technical dimension of care and the human side of nursing. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue of Human Studies on postphenomenology outlines specific developments which have led to this style of phenomenology. Postphenomenology adapts aspects of pragmatism, including its anti-Cartesian program against early modern subject/object epistemology. Postphenomenology retains and emphasizes the use of phenomenological variations as an analytic tool, and in practice postphenomenology takes what is commonly now called “an empirical turn,” which deeply analyzes case studies or concrete issues under its purview.

Some critiques of cybermedicine claim that it is problematic because it fails to create physician–patient relationships. But, electronically mediated encounters do create such relationships. The issue is the nature and quality of those relationships and whether they are conducive to good patient care and meet the ethical ideals and standards of medicine. In this paper, I argue that effective communication and compassion are, in most cases, necessary for the establishment of trusting and morally appropriate physician–patient relationships. The creation of these (...) relationships requires patients and physicians to take psychological and emotional risks and to make commitments to each other. The problem is that by altering the form and content of verbal and non-verbal behaviors and by limiting the kinds of interactions that can take place, cybermedicine makes risk-free interactions easier and more commonplace and retards the development of physician compassion and patient trust. In doing so, cybermedicine encourages morally inappropriate physician–patient relationships. I argue that Merleau-Ponty''s notion of embodiment and Kierkegaard''s criticisms of disinterested reflection help us to understand how cybermedicine can undermine patient health and well being and why it should be seen as a possible threat to the moral integrity of physician–patient relationships. (shrink)

This article offers a discussion of the connection between technology and values and, specifically, I take a closer look at ethically sound design. In order to bring the discussion into a concrete context, the theory of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) will be the focus point. To illustrate my argument concerning design ethics, the discussion involves a case study of an augmented window, designed by the VSD Research Lab, which has turned out to be a potentially surveillance-enabling technology. I call attention (...) to a “positivist problem” that has to do with the connection between the design context and the use context, which VSD seems to presuppose, and I argue that it is necessary to clearly distinguish between the two, since the designers’ intentions do not always correspond with the users’ practice; in fact, the relation between design and use is very complex and principally unpredictable. Thus, a design theory must accept that foresight is limited to anticipation rather than prediction. To overcome the positivist problem, I suggest a phenomenological approach to technology inspired by Don Ihde’s concept of multistability. This argument, which is general in nature and thus applies to any theory of design ethics, is intended as a constructive criticism, which can hopefully contribute to the further development of design ethics. (shrink)

Postphenomenology and posthermeneutics as initiated by Ihde have made important contributions to conceptualizing understanding human–technology relations. However, their focus on individual perception, artifacts, and static embodiment has its limitations when it comes to understanding the embodied use of technology as involving bodily movement, social, and taking place within, and configuring, a temporal horizon. To account for these dimensions of experience, action, and existence with technology, this paper proposes to use a conceptual framework based on performance metaphors. Drawing on metaphors from (...) three performance arts—dance, theatre, and music—and giving examples from social media and other technologies, it is shown that we can helpfully describe technology use and experience as performance involving movement, sociality, and temporality. Moreover, it is argued that these metaphors can also be used to reformulate the idea that in such uses and experiences, now understood as “technoperformances”, technology is not merely a tool but also takes on a stronger, often non-intended role: not so much as “mediator” but as choreographer, director, and conductor of what we experience and do. Performance metaphors thus allow us to recast the phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use as moving, social, and temporal—indeed historical—affair in which technologies take on the role of organizer and structurer of our performances, and in which humans are not necessarily the ones who are fully in control of the meanings, experiences, and actions that emerge from our engagement with the world, with technology, and with each other. This promises to give us a more comprehensive view of what it means to live with technology and how our lives are increasingly organized by technology—especially by smart technologies. Finally, it is argued that this has normative implications for an ethics and politics of technology, now understood as an ethics and politics of technoperformances. (shrink)

Material Engagement Theory is currently driving a conceptual change in the archaeology of mind. Drawing upon the dictates of enactivism and active externalism, it specifically calls for a radical reconceptualization of mind and material culture. Unpersuaded by the common assumption that cognition is brain-bound, Malafouris argues in favour of a process ontology that situates thinking in action. In granting ontological primacy to material engagement, MET seeks to illuminate the emergence of human ways of thinking through the practical effects of the (...) material world. Considering that this is a characteristic example of a pragmatic take on cognition, this contemporary theoretical platform appears to share a lot with pragmatism. As of late, scholars working at the intersection of philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science have made important steps towards the rapprochement between pragmatism and externalism. Looking to contribute to this growing corpus of work, the present paper focuses on MET’s relation to the pragmatism of Peirce, Dewey, and Mead. Having elsewhere recognized the overlap and complementarity between Malafouris’ and Peirce’s theories in particular, I developed a pragmatic and enactive theory of cognitive semiotics that is suitably geared to trace the nature, emergence, and evolution of material signs. Therefore, besides noting some obvious historical connections, I hereby aim to establish the theoretical backdrop upon which this composite theory is supposed to function, while also exploring new potential avenues. Given that this cognitive semiotic framework can be seen as a pragmatic extension of Malafouris’ enactivist approach to archaeology, the current paper delves into MET’s theoretical underpinnings, seeking to complement its working hypotheses and concepts with philosophical notions and ideas advanced long ago. This synthesis ultimately concludes with a call for the reconceptualization of ‘representation’ as a heuristic concept. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to give an outline of digital hermeneutics understood as the encounter between hermeneutics and digital technology, particularly the Internet. In the first part, I want to raise the attention of IT researchers and hermeneuticists to the theoretic and practical relevance of the encounter of their areas of research that are sometimes considered as incompatible to each other. There is still a lot of translation work to be done in order to get these two cultures (...) come closer to and profit from each other. The second part of the paper deals with the foundation of digital hermeneutics on what I call—following Heidegger’s and Vattimo’s paths—digital ontology as opposed to digital metaphysics. (shrink)

New, “smart,” automated technologies for the home are playing a growing role in the construction and refurbishment of many new middle and upper class homes and assisted living facilities in the developed world, promising the improved performance of domestic tasks, as well as enhanced safety, convenience, and efficiency. Expanding the growing automatization of many activities in daily life, automated technologies in the home are interactive, ubiquitous, and often invisible. Their installation, in what is understood to be the locus of personal (...) autonomy and identity, promotes a rethinking on the notion of the self as it is shaped and reshaped within the home. Because these technologies are user-centric, they bring to mind questions as to how their users are envisioned. The current study will focus on human physicality and on the materiality of the body as it is envisaged in the technologies themselves through the study of three automated domestic systems. It will ask if and how our understanding of being a body—or, perhaps, of having one—is redefined as these new technologies assume a growing role in the living of everyday domestic life. (shrink)

Don Ihde’s paper “Stretching the in-between: Embodiment and beyond” appears to me as a stimulating, topical text with a number of important arguments about human embodiment as a dynamic and epistemically relevant dimension to scientific knowledge production. But, indirectly, the text also raises some basic questions about how to describe the (current) scope of technoscientific knowledge, and the potentials of postphenomenology to deal with this complicated, multi-stable issue.

This article argues for a more rigorous distinction between body extensions on the one hand and incorporation of non-bodily objects into the body on the other hand. Real re-embodiment would be a matter of taking things (most often technologies) into the body, i.e. of incorporation of non-bodily items into the body. This, however, is a difficult process often limited by a number of conditions of possibility that are absent in the case of ‘mere’ body extensions. Three categories are discussed: limb (...) extensions/prostheses, perceptual extensions/prostheses and cognitive extensions/prostheses. For each category, a distinction between extensions and incorporations is proposed, and the conditions of possibility for real incorporation are discussed. These conditions of possibility differ in each category, but in general they ask for radical or fundamental alterations not only in the motor and/or sensory or cognitive constitution of a human subject, but also in his or her subjective experience. (shrink)

In recent years several approaches—philosophical, sociological, psychological—have been developed to come to grips with our profoundly technologically mediated world. However, notwithstanding the vast merit of each, they illuminate only certain aspects of technological mediation. This paper is a preliminary attempt at a philosophical reflection on technological mediation as such—deploying the concepts of ‘transparency’ and ‘opacity’ as heuristic instruments. Hence, we locate a ‘theory of transparency’ within several theoretical frameworks—respectively classic phenomenology, media theory, Actor Network Theory, postphenomenology, several ethnographical, psychological, and (...) sociological perspectives, and finally, the Critical Theory of Technology. Subsequently, we render a general, systematic overview of these theories, thereby conjecturing what a broad analysis of technological mediation in and of itself might look like—finding, at last, an essential contradiction between transparency of ‘use’ and transparency of social origins and effects. (shrink)

The paper takes as its starting point Donna Haraway’s suggestion, “The actors are cyborg, nature is coyote, and the geography is elsewhere”. It discusses first the understanding of the cyborg promoted by Haraway as illustrating an ontological non-humanist disposition, rather than a periodizing claim. The second part of the paper examines some instances of low-tech cyborg identities, which have emerged in developing countries (elsewhere) as a consequence of development initiatives. The paper argues that the quite literal attempts to develop cyborgs (...) in such countries gives rise to developments not foreseen or controllable by the development industries. If cyborg identities are developing and minds and bodies shaped in the frictions between culture, technology, economy, and development projects and activities then what are the implications for cognitive studies. In the final part of the paper this question is considered and it is suggested that cognitive studies would do well to expand their analytical foci to take into account cyborg bodies and minds found “elsewhere”. (shrink)

This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By (...) means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person’s point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a ‘live’ condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the ‘rubber hand illusion’ in order to clarify the spectator’s tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world. (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the extension theories of technology. I will identify four influential positions that have been put forward: (1) technology as an extension of the human organism, (2) technology as an extension of the lived body and the senses, (3) technology as an extension of our intentions and desires, and (4) technology as an extension of our faculties and capabilities. I will describe and critically assess these positions one by one and highlight their advantages and (...) their shortcomings and limitations. Along the way, I will explicate some of the differences and similarities between the various approaches. I conclude the paper with some suggestions for future research directions that will be beneficial for advancing theory building and that will drive forward the philosophical refinement of extension theory. (shrink)

John Dewey puts aesthetic experience at the center of his reflection on art and beauty, reconsidering it dynamically. Nowadays, this view opened the path to somaesthetics, a term coined by Richard Shusterman, and aesthetic anthropology. Here, it is argued that the contribution of pragmatist aesthetics could be further developed by exploring its analogies with techno-aesthetics, a paradigm proposed by French philosopher Gilbert Simondon in the early 1980s. Art occupies accordingly a special place within the different forms of aesthetic experience, being (...) considered as a way of experimenting the impact of new technologies in the human experience. It is a process by which technologies create ‘devices’ for experimenting perception and reflection: namely, ways of reconstructing the nature of the human mind in-between body and technology, and by means of their interaction. Cinema reconsidered after Dewey’s fellow George H. Mead, offers an exemplary case as both artistic and technological devices. (shrink)

This paper examines a specific appeal to philosophical anthropology—Andy Clark's—and the role it plays in shaping his account of our fundamental cyborg humanity." By focusing on the theme of embodiment, we also inquire into how phenomenology might benefit from Clark's account as well as how Clark's account might benefit from further engagement with phenomenology. Throughout, we explore inter- and intra-disciplinary questions that highlight the contribution the philosophy of technology can make to our understanding of embodiment and philosophical anthropology.

The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects ( ontology ) insofar as they make (...) these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the attempts to clarify and classify the vague notion of “technosciences” from a historical perspective. A key question that is raised is as follows: Does Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of the modern age, provide a hitherto largely undiscovered programmatic position, which might facilitate a more profound understanding of technosciences ? The paper argues that nearly everything we need today for an ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works (...) of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real - constructivism. Rather than realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon could contribute to the expanding and critical discussion on technoscience. In the following I will reconstruct the term “technoscience”. My finding is that at least four different understandings or types of the term “technoscience” co-exist. In a second step, I will analyze and elaborate on Bacon’s epistemological position. I will identify central elements of the four different understandings in Bacon’s work. Finally, I will conclude that the epistemology of technoscience is, indeed, very old—it is the epistemological position put forward by Bacon. (shrink)

I approach the idea of empirical turns and transcendental theories indirectly. I do not start “post-“ or “neg-” anything; instead I begin pre-philosophically—that is, before everyone has a position and opposes other positions—with Heidegger’s “preparatory hermeneutical” question: As whom and with what concerns do empirically or transcendentally minded philosophers of technology respond to their experience of technoscientific life? For example, in his second Untimely Meditation, Nietzsche identifies his concern as one of “taking advantage” of historical knowledge “for life,” that is, (...) he understands himself to be motivated by a life-driven, not scientific “need.” But how are “needs” in Nietzsche’s sense to be distinguished? The question leads straight to Heidegger’s idea of a hermeneutics that comes “before philosophy”—a “hermeneutics of facticity” that considers “what goes on in [i.e., motivates] a philosophy before it becomes what it is”? I argue that once Nietzsche’s notion of need is expanded and deepened in Heidegger’s direction, we gain some clarity about how to appropriate any information “for life,” whether it is science-based, culturally operative, or phenomenological. I then consider Ihde, Stiegler, and the future prospects of empirical turns and transcendental theories in light of this idea. (shrink)

The emerging school of thought called “postphenomenology” offers a distinct understanding of the ways that people experience technology usage. This perspective combines insights from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with commitments to the anti-essentialism and nonfoundationalism of American pragmatism. One of postphenomenology’s central positions is that technologies always remain “multistable,” i.e., subject to different uses and meanings. But I suggest that as this perspective matures, philosophical problems are emerging around the notion of multistability, what I call “the problem of invariance” (...) and “the problem of grounding.” These problems point out things that remain unclear within the postphenomenological framework, such as how it handles structural claims regarding a technology’s various stabilities, and how it grounds its claims. How can postphenomenology make structural claims about technology and yet remain anti-essentializing? And on what epistemological basis does it ground its claims about human-technology relations? The paper concludes with a series of prescriptions that, if followed, enable postphenomenology to make edifying claims about technology, all while avoiding the problems of invariance and grounding, and maintaining its commitments to anti-essentialism and nonfoundationalism. (shrink)

In their 2007 paper, Swierstra and Rip identify characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation in the debate about the ethics of new and emerging science and technologies (or “NEST-ethics”). Taking their NEST-ethics structure as a starting point, we considered the debate about tissue engineering (TE), and argue what aspects we think ought to be a part of a rich and high-quality debate of TE. The debate surrounding TE seems to be predominantly a debate among experts. When considering the NEST-ethics (...) arguments that deal directly with technology, we can generally conclude that consequentialist arguments are by far the most prominently featured in discussions of TE. In addition, many papers discuss principles, rights and duties relevant to aspects of TE, both in a positive and in a critical sense. Justice arguments are only sporadically made, some “good life” arguments are used, others less so (such as the explicit articulation of perceived limits, or the technology as a technological fix for a social problem). Missing topics in the discussion, at least from the perspective of NEST-ethics, are second “level” arguments—those referring to techno-moral change connected to tissue engineering. Currently, the discussion about tissue engineering mostly focuses on its so-called “hard impacts”—quantifiable risks and benefits of the technology. Its “soft impacts”—effects that cannot easily be quantified, such as changes to experience, habits and perceptions, should receive more attention. (shrink)

The integration of technology in care is core business in nursing and this role requires that we must understand and use technology informed by evidence that goes much deeper and broader than actions and behaviours. We need to delve more deeply into its complexity because there is nothing minor or insignificant about technology as a major influence in healthcare outcomes and experiences. Evidence is needed that addresses technology and nursing from perspectives that examine the effects of technology, especially related to (...) increasing demands for efficiency, the relationship of technology to nursing and caring, and a range of philosophical questions associated with empowering people in their healthcare choices. Specifically, there is a need to confront in practice the ways technique influences care. Technique is the creation of a kind of thinking that is necessary for contemporary healthcare technology to develop and be applied in an efficient and rational manner. Technique is not an entity or specific thing, but rather a way of thinking that seeks to shape and organize nursing activity, and manage efficiently individual difference(s) in care. It emphasizes predetermined causal relationships, conformity, and sameness of product, process, and thought. In response is needed a radical vision of nursing that attempts in a real sense to ensure we meet the needs of individuals and their community. Activism and advocacy are needed, and a willingness to create a certain detachment from the imperatives that technique demands. It is argued that our responsibility as nurses is to respond in practice to the errors, advantages, difficulties, and temptations of technology for the benefit of those who most need our assistance and care. (shrink)

In recent years, increasingly advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular machine learning, has shown great promise as a tool in various healthcare contexts. Yet as machine learning in medicine has become more useful and more widely adopted, concerns have arisen about the “black-box” nature of some of these AI models, or the inability to understand—and explain—the inner workings of the technology. Some critics argue that AI algorithms must be explainable to be responsibly used in the clinical encounter, while supporters (...) of AI dismiss the importance of explainability and instead highlight the many benefits the application of this technology could have for medicine. However, this dichotomy fails to consider the particular ways in which machine learning technologies mediate relations in the clinical encounter, and in doing so, makes explainability more of a problem than it actually is. We argue that postphenomenology is a highly useful theoretical lens through which to examine black-box AI, because it helps us better understand the particular mediating effects this type of technology brings to clinical encounters and moves beyond the explainability stalemate. Using a postphenomenological approach, we argue that explainability is more of a concern for physicians than it is for patients, and that a lack of explainability does not introduce a novel concern to the physician–patient encounter. Explainability is just one feature of technological mediation and need not be the central concern on which the use of black-box AI hinges. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with Hubert Dreyfus’s phenomenological ethics regarding information technologies and the use of the Internet. From the 1990s on, Dreyfus elaborates a multi-faceted model of ethical expertise which may find a paradigmatic field of application in the ways in which information technologies transform our sense of personal identity, as well as our view of ethical integrity and commitment. In his 2001 On the Internet, Dreyfus investigates further several of the ideas already present in his groundbreaking 1997 (...) Disclosing New Worlds. A phenomenological ethics of the virtual aims at going beyond both the objectivist ideal of moral universalism, which departs from the dominant Cartesianism both in epistemology and in ethics, as well as from the postmodernist, Nietzsche-inspired moral relativism. By referring back to existentialism, especially to Kierkegaard, and to phenomenology, especially to Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, Dreyfus sketches a model of ethical expertise which can be particularly useful for internet users and researchers, as it combines a phenomenological anthropology of the virtual with a theory of cultural innovation and change. In my view, Dreyfus’s model may help overcome the strict either determinist or relativist accounts of the ethical challenges posed by information technologies. By endorsing a strongly anti-intellectualist view of information technologies, Dreyfus poses the necessity of identity and ethical integrity not only as abstract principles that require rational justification, but also as context-bound everyday practices that are in conformity with the “style” of a culture and several disclosive activities within it. (shrink)

Physical literacy, a concept introduced by Britain’s physical education and phenomenological scholar, Margaret Whitehead, who aligned the term with her monist view of the human condition and emphasis that we are essentially embodied beings in-the-world, is a foundational hub of recent physical education curricular revision. The adoption of the term serves a political purpose as it helps stakeholders advocate for the educational, specifically literacy, rights of the whole child. Yet, one might wonder what impact conceptual shifts of becoming “physically literate” (...) in lieu of becoming “physically educated” have on physical education research and practice. Terms such as “reading” the game and metaphors that describe the body as an “instrument of expression” are entering the lexicon of physical education but from a seemingly cognitive frame of reference. Arguably, the extent to which the adoption of physical literacy has on dissolving Cartesian views of the body and the mechanization of movement it performs has yet to be questioned. This article thus acts as an invitation to explore physical literacy in a Merleau-Pontian inspired act of inscribing the world through movement and how a reading of a reversible imprint might awaken a more fluent sense of what it means to become physically literate as new curricular pathways in the field of physical education emerge. (shrink)

Recombinant DNA technology is an essential area of life engineering. The main aim of research in this field is to experimentally explore the possibilities of repairing damaged human DNA, healing or enhancing future human bodies. Based on ethnographic research in a Czech biochemical laboratory, the article explores biotechnological corporealities and their specific ontology through dealings with bio-objects, the bodywork of scientists. Using the complementary concepts of utopia and heterotopia, the text addresses the situation of bodies and bio-objects in a laboratory. (...) Embodied utopias are analyzed as material semiotic phenomena that are embodied by scientists in their visions and emotions and that are related to potential bodies and to future, not-yet-actualized embodiments. As a counterpart to this, the text explores embodied heterotopias, which are always the other spaces, like biotechnological bio-objects that are simulated in computers or stored in special solutions. (shrink)

New accents in the philosophy of technology and philosophy of science amounting, e.g., to the so-called schools of the “New Experimentalism”, “New Instrumentalism” and, recently, “New Mechanism” emphasize the impact of instruments, experiments, and “mechanisms” of the respective technologies opened up by the progress of ever-improving measuring instruments, procedures etc. In addition, it would be necessary to accentuate the process- and action-orientation including practical responsibility problems and dynamic systems models from an epistemological perspective of the methodological scheme-interpretationist approach developed by (...) the author since the seventies of last century. The necessity of multi-disciplinary mutual influences was already time and again stressed regarding philosophy of science. But relatively new is not only the methodological turn involved but also the necessity to go to higher levels of abstraction, metatheories, action- and value-orientation. Therefore, we have to go more interdisciplinary, systems-oriented, and higher-level. That implies notable consequences for an ethics, or rather, meta-ethics for philosophy of science. Practice-oriented philosophers of science will have to go more methodological, multidisciplinary and even responsible. (shrink)

This article investigates the conceptual foundations of technological innovation and development projects that aim to bring ethical and social issues into the design stage. Focusing on the ethics and social impact of technological innovation and development has been somewhat of a trend lately, for instance in ELSA research and in such initiatives as the Dutch Responsible Innovation programme. I argue that in order to succeed in doing social responsible and ethical sound design, a proper understanding of the relation between technology (...) and society is required. I propose to move away from an externalist framework, in which technology and society are depicted as being defined independently, towards an interdependent framework, where technology and society are regarded to be mutually defining. This move is necessary in order for such innovation projects not to reinforce outdated concepts about technology, which in the longer run will prove counterproductive to the actual aims of the projects themselves. (shrink)

This paper presents a Heideggerian phenomenological analysis of screens. In a world and an epoch where screens pervade a great many aspects of human experience, we submit that phenomenology, much in a traditional methodological form, can provide an interesting and novel basis for our understanding of screens. We ground our analysis in the ontology of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time [1927/1962], claiming that screens will only show themselves as they are if taken as screens-in-the-world. Thus, the phenomenon of screen is (...) not investigated in its empirical form or conceptually. It is rather taken as a grounding intentional orientation that conditions our engagement with certain surfaces as we comport ourselves towards them “as screens.” In doing this we claim to have opened up the phenomenon of screen in a new and meaningful way. (shrink)

Focusing on the largest and, arguably, the least visible disability group, the hearing impaired, this paper explores present-day views and understandings of hearing impairment and rehabilitation in a Danish context, with particular focus on working-age adults with late onset of hearing impairment. The paper shows how recent changes in perception of the hearing impaired patient relate to the introduction of a new health care reform that turns audiological rehabilitation into a consumer issue. Ethnographic and interview data from hearing clinics provides (...) evidence that the hearing technologies that are on offer stabilise in specific forms through processes of negotiation among a variety of social actors representing the interests of science, industry, government, and hearing-impaired people. The discussion critically considers the emergence of an “informed consumer” in audiological practices. (shrink)

This article makes the case for including frameworks of media ecology and mobilities research in the shaping of critical robotics research for a human-centered and holistic lens onto robot technologies. The two meta-disciplines, which align in their attention to relational processes of communication and movement, provide useful tools for critically exploring emerging human–robot dimensions and dynamics. Media ecology approaches human-made technologies as media that can shape the way we think, feel, and act. Relatedly, mobilities research highlights various kinds of influential (...) movement and stillness of people, things, and ideas. The emerging field of critical robotics research can benefit from such attention to the ways of thinking, feeling, and moving robotic forms and environments encourage and discourage. Drawing on various studies into robotics, I illustrate those conceptual alignments of media ecology, mobilities, and critical robotics research and point to the value of this interdisciplinary approach to robots as media and robotics as socio-cultural environments. (shrink)