This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory, (...) which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger’s questioning of technology as belonging to “classical philosophy of technology,” postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Despite the vast amount of work produced by philosophers, historians and sociologists on the nature of scientific activity, “observation itself is rarely the focus of attention and almost never the subject of historical inquiry in its own right”. This general lack of interest in the nature of scientific observation was perhaps most clearly reflected in the Vienna Circle’s attempt to establish an analysis of science beginning at the level of protocol sentences. To do so, of course, they had to disregard (...) the humidity and fogged lenses facing the primatologist in the jungle, or the way in which flights aboard military aircraft were once sought by physicists in order to expose... (shrink)

A central question in philosophical and sociological accounts of technology is how the agency of technologies should be conceived, that is, how to understand their constitutive roles in the actions performed by assemblages of humans and artifacts. To address this question, I build on the suggestion that a helpful perspective can be gained by amalgamating “actor-network theory” and “postphenomenological” accounts. The idea is that only a combined account can confront both the nuances of human experiential relationships with technology on which (...) postphenomenology specializes, and also the chains of interactions between numerous technologies and humans that actor-network theory can address. To perform this amalgamation, however, several technical adjustments to these theories are required. The central change I develop here is to the postphenomenological notion of “multistability,” i.e., the claim that a technology can be used for multiple purposes through different contexts. I expand the postphenomenological framework through the development of a method called “variational cross-examination,” which involves critically contrasting the various stabilities of a multistable technology for the purpose of exploring how a particular stability has come to dominate. As a guiding example, I explore the case of the everyday public bench. The agency of this “mundane artifact,” as actor-network theorist Bruno Latour would call it, cannot be accounted for by either postphenomenology or actor-network theory alone. (shrink)

Why does a cell phone have a screen? From televisions and cell phones to refrigerators, many contemporary technologies come with a screen. The article aims at answering this question by employing Emmanuel Levinas’ notions of the Other and the face. This article also engages with Don Ihde’s conceptualization of alterity relations, in which the technological acts as quasi-other with which we maintain relations. If technology is a quasi-other, then, I claim, the screen is the quasi-face. By exploring Levinas’ ontology, specifically (...) what can be identified as his tool analysis, as well as his notion of the face, a new understanding of contemporary technologies can be extracted. Some of these technologies hardly fit into the Heideggerian notion of the hand as the main interface to artifacts. Instead they require the face. Levinas’ notion of the face is analyzed from an ontological perspective and developed in conjunction with the screen. As the screen serves as a quasi-face, it enables the construction of quasi-other technological artifacts. (shrink)

During the second half of the twentieth century, several philosophers of technology argued that their predecessors had reflected too abstractly and pessimistically on technology. In the view of these critics, one should study technologies empirically in order to fully understand them. They developed several strategies to empirically inform the philosophy of technology and called their new approach the empirical turn. However, they provide insufficient indications of what exactly is meant by empirical study in their work. This leads to the critical (...) question of what counts as an empirically informed philosophy of technology in the empirical turn. In order to answer this question, we first elaborate on the problems that the empirical turn philosophers tried to address; secondly, we sketch their solutions, and, thirdly, we critically discuss their conceptions of empirical study. Our critical analysis of the empirical turn contributes to new efforts to engage in an empirically informed philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Because climate change can be seen as the blind spot of contemporary philosophy of technology, while the destructive side effects of technological progress are no longer deniable, this article reflects on the role of technologies in the constitution of the (post)Anthropocene world. Our first hypothesis is that humanity is not the primary agent involved in world-production, but concrete technologies. Our second hypothesis is that technological inventions at an ontic level have an ontological impact and constitutes world. As we object to (...) classical philosophers of technology like Ihde and Heidegger, we will sketch the progressive contribution of our conceptuality to understand the role of technology in the Anthropocene world. Our third hypothesis is that technology has emancipatory potential and in this respect, can inaugurate a post-Anthropocene World. We consider these three hypotheses to develop a philosophical account of the ontology of technology beyond an abstract and deterministic understanding. This concept enables us to philosophically reflect on the role of technology in the Anthropocene World in general, and its contribution to the transition to the post-Anthropocene World in particular. (shrink)

In this paper, in the first place, I aim to enquire into Bernard Stiegler’s critical appropriation of his mentor Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, emphasizing how Stiegler’s philosophy of technology stems from an original interpretation of the main tenets of deconstruction. From this perspective, I will investigate Stiegler’s definition of technology as tertiary retention, i.e., exosomatized, artificial memory interrelating with biological memory, testing its hermeneutic strengths as well as possible weaknesses. In the second place, I aim to contrast Stiegler’s understanding (...) of technology with the concept of multistability brought forward by postphenomenological philosophies of technology such as those elaborated by Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek. This investigation will enable me to submit that Stiegler’s approach represents a peculiar and innovative way to conceive of technology. On the one hand, indeed, it does not seem to fall prey to the criticisms raised by postphenomenology against traditional philosophies of technology such as Martin Heidegger’s or Jacques Ellul’s, deemed to be overly deterministic, abstract and pessimistic in their understanding of technology. On the other, it retains important methodological precautions from deconstruction, thereby pointing at some possible blind spots of postphenomenology, especially concerning the vexed question of the empirical-transcendental divide, which Stiegler aims to develop beyond both Derrida’s and postphenomenology’s stances. (shrink)

In this chapter, we philosophically reflect on the concept of innovation. To this end, we distinguish between the innovation process and outcome dimension, and between the ontic and ontological dimension of innovation. The ontic dimension of innovation concerns beings like new artefacts, and the ontological dimension concerns the being of these beings. These distinctions lead to four characteristics of our understanding of innovation with several implications for the object of innovation and its novelty, as well as for the temporality and (...) human involvement in innovation practices. It will turn out that innovation concerns the ontogenetic process in which primarily a world is constituted - i.e. the digital world - in which the invention of new artefacts - i.e. blockchain technology - is embedded. This ontogenetic process doesn’t follow a chronological temporal order, but is constituted by a temporal iterative process. Human creativity is involved in this ontogenetic process as co-creative capacity. In section three, we show the advantage of our conceptualization of innovation and its implications for contemporary and future alternative theories of innovation. (shrink)

It is clear that we have to do something in our time concerning global warming yet before we can actually change the world, we must first understand our world. According to Heidegger, technology itself is not good or bad, but the problem is, that technological thinking (calculative thinking) has become the only form of thinking. Heidegger saw that the essence of technology nowadays is enframing – Ge-stell, which means that everything in nature is ‘standing-reserve’ (Bestand). Enframing (as apparatus) is one (...) way of uncovering, which for Heidegger meant truth. Truth can appear in many ways and the danger is that this truth of representational-calculative thinking becomes the only truth. We claim that the calculative way of thinking must be changed and we posit that Gelassenheit (slow thinking, releasement, letting-go) is the remedy. It does not mean some kind of mysticism or irrationality. The notion of Gelassenheit includes the idea of to let learn. We as teachers and educators have to learn how to think outside of the technological ‘Ge-stell’ and start thinking and acting in radically new ways. Like Arne Naes and Michael Zimmerman we connect the overcoming of technological ‘Ge-stell’ with so called deep ecology. We have to ‘learn to think’ and act within the deep ecology. We call for an educational ecological imperative. Every teacher and educationalist has to think what they can do (not as private person but as professionals) in order to prevent the coming eco-catastrophe. (shrink)

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. (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)

RESUMEN En este artículo problematizo el protagonismo del comprender en Ser y tiempo, para demostrar que la modificación conceptual que hace Nancy de la relación como remisión a la estructura relacional "ser-a" es el elemento clave para su transformación de la ontología heideggeriana en una ontología de los cuerpos. Para realizarlo, primero evalúo las implicaciones de la interpretación del lenguaje como dóxa en Heidegger. Luego, a partir de Nancy desarrollo la noción de sentido como transitividad del ser, soportada en la (...) estructura "ser-a". En tercer lugar, expongo otra noción de mundo correspondiente a la aperturidad ontológica sin ser apriorística, que atenta contra la preeminencia ontológica del humano y enfatiza la fundamentalidad del ser-con. Finalmente, resalto dos consecuencias de este cambio metodológico: la transformación de la existencia en creación de mundo en lugar de comprensión y de la comunidad como régimen ontológico singular-plural. ABSTRACT In this paper, I problematize the prominence of understanding in Being and Time. In order to demonstrate that the conceptual modification that Nancy does of the relation as "reference" to the relational structure "being-to" is the key element to transform the Heideggerian ontology into an ontology of bodies. To do it, first, I evaluate the implications of the interpretation of language as doxa in the first Heidegger. Then, departing from Nancy, I develop the notion of sense as transitivity of being, supported by the structure "being-to". In third place, I expose another notion of the world, corresponding to the ontological opening without being aprioristic; which works against the ontological preeminence of the human and emphasizes the fundamentality of being-with. Finally, I explain two consequences of this methodological change: the transformation of the existence as creation, instead of comprehension, and of the community as a singular-plural ontological regime. (shrink)

What I intend to demonstrate in this paper is that Heidegger pretends to immunize his philosophy from any possibility of refutation. The thesis that I argue is that precisely because the ontological cannot be corroborated by the empirical realm and, on the other hand, does not provide a foundation for what he considers the a priori, the German philosopher shields his philosophy from any kind of reply: the ontological cannot be corroborated by beings and, at the same time, it can (...) only be reached by a “leap”. The question is: on what is the a priori founded? how to establish the validity or legitimacy of a horizon? There seems to be no answer. (shrink)

As a regular reader of Science, Scientific American, Nature and The Eonomist, I could not miss how so many articles in these science-technology journals refer to micro-processing, which today dominates so much science-praxis. I have become aware that how science happens, changes primarily with a wide context of instrument changes. That is what this paper is about. Heidegger’s technologies were largely Industrial-Big, Machinic, and Mechanical. Science, today often a leader, is now operating by using micro-nano processes and has often shifted (...) to biological and medical sciences, marking a change in how science operates. This has significant consequences for how we should think about the “transcendental” and the “empirical” in philosophy of technology. (shrink)

What will philosophy of technology be as its practitioners depart from the cross- roads of the ideas of Don Ihde and Bernard Stiegler? Their two lines of thought confront and cross each other, giving rise to different ways of understanding technologies. Rather than following one or the other of these directions, I propose an Erörterung of such crossroads. As Heidegger’s commentary on Georg Trakl’s poetry insists, Erörterung means, first, “to point out the proper place or site of something to situate (...) it,” and, second, “to heed that place or site ”. This Erörterung has to be conducted at multiple times, on multiple levels, as each of them hermeneutically identifies its own site. I proceed first through an Erörterung of the crossroads of the thinking of technology after Ihde and Stiegler, and second through an Erörterung of the Ort or the site of the first Erörterung, where the Ort for Heidegger is the land of the evening, the Occident [Abendland], in the throes of globalization, or more precisely Americanisation, a form of disorientation, that obscures the unconcealment of the essence of the human-technology relationship central to Heidegger. In the third part, I propose that the way to integrate and extend Heidegger, Ihde, and Stiegler is to acknowledge the importance of historical, cultural, and geopolitical difference in the interrelationship between the cosmos, morality, and technical activities, what I call cosmotechnics. (shrink)

I would like to introduce the notion of machine hermeneutics in this paper. The notion refers to hermeneutical activity performed by machines. Machines are now capable of making the very interpretive tasks, using artificial intelligence algorithms based on the technology of machine learning that used to be the exclusive domain of human beings. In making this claim, I am not talking about possible conscious machines of the future, but those existing here and now. With facial recognition algorithms, for example, machines (...) are now performing routinely what must be regarded as hermeneutical analyses with astounding accuracy and power. Thus, machine hermeneutics supplements Don Ihde’s notion of material hermeneutics. In the latter, it is still human beings who do the interpretation, through the lenses provided the natural sciences; in this case, the natural sciences, or the technology afforded by the sciences, intervene between the human being and the world. In machine hermeneutics, on the contrary, the intervening comes in two layers. On the one hand, there is the usual intervention that Ihde talks about, but on the other, the artificial intelligence algorithm performs its own kind of intervention and interpretation, presenting an already interpreted result to the human beings, who then perceive it through the aid of the usual intervention such as the normal eyeglasses. Then the paper discusses the problem of how to justify the kind of perception that undergoes this process. In what sense can it be said that the algorithm is performing the right action, i.e., one such that the process comes up with a right picture of the world? I contend that this does not merely consist of technical excellence for the technology involved, but also ethical excellence. The two cannot be considered one apart from the other. (shrink)

Straipsnyje siekiama atskleisti antikinės ir moderniosios technikos sampratos panašumus ir skirtumus. Moderniosios technikos analizė rodo, kad ši technika pasižymi svetima autentiškai kultūrai, gruobuoniška prigimtimi. Išryškėja esminis tradiciškai suprantamos technē ir moderniosios technikos skirtumas. Moderniosios technikos esmė, kuri įvardijama žodžiu „po-stata“, yra tokia: vietoj savaimingo esinių atsiskleidimo būties šviesoje, kai žmogus dalyvauja šiame atsiskleidimo procese tik kaip tarpininkas bei kūrėjas, vyksta grobuoniško-prievartinio pobūdžio atsiskleidimas, žmogui dalyvaujant kaip reikalaujančiai jėgai. Naudojantis moderniojo mokslo pajėgomis, kaskart vis labiau objektinama gamta šiais laikais tampa paprasčiausia (...) išteklių talpykla. Modernioji technika ir jos inicijuotas globalaus išteklių kaupimo ir vertimo preke procesas neišvengiamai gilina krizės tendencijas ir stiprina susvetimėjimo procesą. Straipsnis atskleidžia potencialios disharmonijos, siejamos su globalios, autonomiškos technokratijos iškilimu, horizontą. (shrink)

The entanglement of ethics and technology makes it necessary for us to understand and reflect upon our own practices and to question technological hypes. The information and communication technology literacy required to navigate the twenty-first century has to do with recognizing our own human limitations, developing critical measures and acknowledging feelings of estrangement, puzzlement as well as sheer wonder of technology. ICT literacy is indeed all about visions of the good life and the art of living in the twenty-first century. (...) The main focus of this paper is to explore and discuss ICT in relation to pupils and teachers and try to understand why and how these technologies are implemented in the school system. This focus not only allows us to better understand how concepts and habits with respect to ICT are shaped in numerous children, but teaches us to acquire an enhanced sensitivity with regard to ICT in the ‘classic’ literacy context of the educational system. (shrink)

Technical mediation shapes our experience of the world, but it also shapes our experience of ourselves. In this paper, I argue that in order to understand the latter aspect of technical mediation, we need to expand on notions of technical mediation that focuses on actual use, and bring in possible use as well. The concept of technical mediation must therefore be grounded in a more general concept of technological presence. This concept indicates that technology harbours both actuality and potentiality, the (...) latter denoting that technologies offer possible actions, through which we realise specific actions, and, more importantly, realise ourselves; it is through the technological presence in our lifeworld we are able to recognise our own possibilities to be in and act in the lifeworld. The technologically revealed possibilities enable the subject to be constituted in a temporal forward-directedness, so that technological potentiality becomes co-constitutive of the subjects that we are and may become. (shrink)

This article asks, what is worth knowing? The concept of objectivity in contemporary philosophy of science is argued to de-value indigenous knowledge-systems and gendered approaches. Community bias is argued to confound rogue research with gendered and indigenous situatedness. This problem is resolved using the innovation of ‘ecosystem services.’ Technoscience is explained as the appropriation of science by capital interests and strong critique from Vandana Shiva in the global South is provided. Finally, because philosophers of science resist discussion of sociopolitical issues, (...) the “very notion of philosophy of science” is argued to be in crisis caused by limited understanding of ‘knowledge’ that has been reduced to post-Enlightenment science, and by neglect of the broader human context within which the sciences work. (shrink)

Ever since Achterhuis designated American philosophy of technology “empirical” there has been a Continental “push-back” defending the first generation of European—mostly Heidegger’s essentialistic “transcendental”—philosophy of technology. While I prefer a “concrete” turn—to avoid confusing with British “empiricism”—in a belief that particular technologies are different from others—this is a quibble. I admit I was very taken by Richard Rorty’s “anti-essentialism” and “non-foundationalism” in his version of pragmatism, and have adapted much of that stance into postphenomenology. In this contribution I reply to (...) the comments of Lars Botin and Robert Rosenberger. (shrink)

This paper proposes that intuitive technologies play a vital role in cognition and cultural reception. The case of music is considered in particular. The perceived temporality of contemporary technology is shown to be an artificial barrier to the acknowledgement of longer-term dynamics. The increased role of explanatory metaphors from technology is traced across various fields of study. Processes of sense-making—conscious or otherwise—are seen as an informal, unreflected repertory of mechanisms ranging from predictive models to instrumental metaphors. It is suggested that (...) these derive by assimilation and induction from the technological milieu within which the subject develops and operates. The acquisition of these models and metaphors is itself an imaginative process, based on experience ranging from partial expertise to fantastical extrapolation. (shrink)

In a future world of ubiquitous computing, in which humans interact with computerized technologies even more frequently and in even more situations than today, interface design will have increased importance. One feature of interface that I argue will be especially relevant is what I call abstract relational strategies. This refers to an approach (in both a bodily and conceptual sense) toward the use of a technology, an approach that is general enough to be applied in many different concrete scenarios. Such (...) an abstract manner of approach is relevant, for example, when an interface design for a device to which users are already accustomed is applied to an entirely different device (such as a device used for a completely different purpose). To articulate this idea, I explore the history of keyboards, and consider how the habits of interface with one kind (e.g., piano keyboards) have historically enabled some users to approach other technologies fitted with similar keyboard interface (e.g., typewriters, electronic instrumentation). I conclude by brainstorming ways that abstract relational strategies, applicable to a variety of different devices, will have increased importance in a future world in which computing is even more ubiquitous than today. (shrink)

Abstract No one doubts the radically transformative power of contemporary technologies and technoscientific practices over the material dimensions of our experience. Yet with the coming of all the exciting changes and the promise of ever better material conditions, what kinds of lives are we implicitly being encouraged to live? One would think that current philosophical studies of technology would make this a central question, and indeed, a few have done so. But many do not. Following the lead of thinkers who (...) have made the so-called “empirical turn,” many demur, usually with some remarks about the question being too abstract and general—too likely to suck us into utopian or dystopian speculations—when what is called for are truly informative and “concrete” studies of what it is like to be with actual technologies. My paper considers the good life question—and the philosophical price one pays for not asking it—in light of Auguste Comte’s theory of the three stages of intellectual development. Comte’s depiction of the third, positive scientific stage is much less dated than one might assume. In fact, it is useful to think of our own era as arriving with a Comtean story attached, that is, a story of life in the “developed” world becoming ever better thanks to modern science and technology. Because this story now seems less deserving of the unqualified optimism Comte had about it, I argue that thinking of our own experience as permeated by Comte’s conception of third-stage life gives us a fresh way to consider our misgivings about this default position without either lapsing into utopian or dystopian speculation, or confining one’s focus to purely postphenomenological or pragmatic studies of technoscientific life as it now “appears.” Content Type Journal Article Category Research Article Pages 1-25 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0047-2 Authors Robert C. Scharff, Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3574, USA Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

I argue that Heidegger’s account of technology as “enframing” is a helpful lens through which to understand the possible effects and dangers of transhumanism. Without resorting to nebulous concepts such as “dignity;” Heidegger’s analysis can help us understand how new technologies employed to modify the body; brain; and consciousness will enframe our own bodies and identities as something akin to “standing reserve.” Under transhumanism; the body is enframed as an external; technologically modifiable product. I indicate some of the problems that (...) might arise when our own bodies no longer appear as central to our identity as embodied beings. Further; I argue that; by treating aspects of our own consciousness as technologically modifiable; we will be driven into a commodified and inauthentic relation to our identities. By examining the work of prominent transhumanists – including Brad Allenby; Daniel Sarewitz; and Andy Clark – I show how the threat that technology poses can be hidden when the essence of technology is not uncovered in a primordial way. I argue that by threatening to obscure death as a foundational possibility for Dasein; transhumanism poses the danger of hiding the need to develop a free and authentic relation to technology; Truth; and ultimately to Dasein itself. (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)

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.

The empirical-transcendental debate in philosophy of technology, as debates go, took a turn toward the counterposing of the two perspectives, ‘empirical’-pragmatic-pragmatist versus ‘transcendental’-critical. Postphenomenology aligns itself with the former standpoint, and it is in this spirit that commentators have criticized it for its too-instrumentalist stance and lack of overarching, i.e., transcendental orientation. But the positions may have become too starkly delineated in order for the debate to reach any breakthrough: a seemingly unbridgeable gap yawns between the stances of ‘technology with (...) a small “t”’ and ‘Technology with a capital “T.”' Is there any way to reorient the debate? In this paper I propose to do so by considering whether there would be some way of arriving from one end of the spectrum to the other—crossing the gap. Exploring the purported wasteland in between “technology” and “Technology” by way of object-oriented ontology (OOO)—Harman, Morton—we can find it actually filled with countless gaps, adhering to every thing. Following the radical insights of OOO, we’d have to attest to a ‘thing-transcendentality.’ The ‘gap,’ then, that seemed so threatening and all-encompassing, becomes smeared out, levelled down to a multiplicity of perspectives. And this casts the debate, with its purported strict tension between ‘empirical’ and ‘transcendental’ positions, in fresh terms, opening up new ways for studying how the two interrelate. (shrink)

The so-called transhumanist project is anthropotechnic and aims at the enhancement of human physical and cognitive capabilities through the employment of new technologies. Nevertheless, when viewed through the lens of Heidegger’s philosophy, the project appears to confirm his own view on modern technology. According to Heidegger, the essence of modern technology is to serve as an ontological framework in which beings are unconcealed as a totality of resources or stock items. Thus, the first part of this paper examines Heidegger’s approach (...) to technology in order to cast light upon the deep danger of dehumanization entailed by transhumanism. In the second section, however, the ability of Heidegger’s thought to cope with the transhumanist danger is put into question, since it fails to conceive of the essential living character of human being. (shrink)

Ethics of using technology requires proper classification of technologies so that the ethical principles appropriate to the common characteristics of each major category of technology can be provided. Don Ihde in his post-phenomenological approach categorizes our relationship with technology into four categories of embodiment, hermeneutics, alterity, and background; hence, one can similarly classifies technologies based on their primary function. Accordingly, embodied technologies expand our perceptions; hermeneutical technologies refer to something other than themselves and are like a text open before us; (...) technologies of alterity appear a human person before us; and the background technologies are engaged on the margin of our consciousness. This article intends to show that Ihde’s division is an appropriate foundation for the ethical issues, especially the ethics of using technology, because of its capacities such as its noticing the human relationship with his surrounding world, its including of old and new technologies, and its objectivity and neutrality. However, this division has its ambiguities and shortcomings, including the lack of collectivity and formal flaws. It seems that these shortcomings can be eliminated with a few reforms. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

In this article we explore how diagnostic and therapeutic technologies shape the lived experiences of illness for patients. By analysing a wide range of examples, we identify six ways that technology can (trans)form the experience of illness (and health). First, technology may create awareness of disease by revealing asymptomatic signs or markers (imaging techniques, blood tests). Second, the technology can reveal risk factors for developing diseases (e.g., high blood pressure or genetic tests that reveal risks of falling ill in the (...) future). Third, the technology can affect and change an already present illness experience (e.g., the way blood sugar measurement affects the perceived symptoms of diabetes). Fourth, therapeutic technologies may redefine our experiences of a certain condition as diseased rather than unfortunate (e.g. assisted reproductive technologies or symptom based diagnoses in psychiatry). Fifth, technology influences illness experiences through altering social-cultural norms and values regarding various diagnoses. Sixth, technology influences and changes our experiences of being healthy in contrast and relation to being diseased and ill. This typology of how technology forms illness and related conditions calls for reflection regarding the phenomenology of technology and health. How are medical technologies and their outcomes perceived and understood by patients? The phenomenological way of approaching illness as a lived, bodily being-in-the-world is an important approach for better understanding and evaluating the effects that medical technologies may have on our health, not only in defining, diagnosing, or treating diseases, but also in making us feel more vulnerable and less healthy in different regards. (shrink)

Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work. Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research. However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint. We examine the work of Donald Schön and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors' suggestions that technical rationality and modern technology are not the way to achieve good practice in the (...) human services. At the same time, we are not convinced that the alternatives offered by Schön and Heidegger provide what good practice requires. We draw on Aristotle's account of the intellectual virtues and make the case for phronesis and praxis as other possibilities for inspiring new kinds of social welfare practice in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Heidegger’s thoughts on modern technology have received much attention in many disciplines and fields, but, with a few exceptions, the influence has been sparse in biomedical ethics. The reason for this might be that Heidegger’s position has been misinterpreted as being generally hostile towards modern science and technology, and the fact that Heidegger himself never subjected medical technologies to scrutiny but was concerned rather with industrial technology and information technology. In this paper, Heidegger’s philosophy of modern technology is introduced and (...) then brought to bear on medical technology. Its main relevance for biomedical ethics is found to be that the field needs to focus upon epistemological and ontological questions in the philosophy of medicine related to the structure and goal of medical practice. Heidegger’s philosophy can help us to see how the scientific attitude in medicine must always be balanced by and integrated into a phenomenological way of understanding the life-world concerns of patients. The difference between the scientific and the phenomenological method in medicine is articulated by Heidegger as two different ways of studying the human body: as biological organism and as lived body. Medicine needs to acknowledge the priority of the lived body in addressing health as a way of being-in-the-world and not as the absence of disease only. A critical development of Heidegger’s position can provide us with a criterion for distinguishing the uses of medical technologies that are compatible with such an endeavor from the technological projects that are not. (shrink)

This article proposes a reading of digital citizenships as these are shifting from a historical and conceptual perspective. We developed the following steps to carry it out: first, a problematization of the concept of digital citizenship from a critical-historical reading, betting on a complex understanding of it that assumes interactions between public and private spheres; second, taking into account aspects of the technology’s philosophy, we analyze the relationship between young people and politics through Twitter, and finally, a proposal of prejudices (...) configuration and modelling that can occur in this new public-private sphere based on some aspects seen in the second round of the 2018 Colombian presidential campaign. One of the conclusions we reached is that Twitter is a sociotechnical network that generates a shifting form of connection between the private and public spheres, where young people have assemblage and can generate resistance to the modelling imposed by political campaigns. (shrink)

A widespread need to explain the behavior and outcomes of AI-based systems has emerged, due to their ubiquitous presence. Thus, providing renewed momentum to the relatively new research area of eXplainable AI (XAI). Nowadays, the importance of XAI lies in the fact that the increasing control transference to this kind of system for decision making -or, at least, its use for assisting executive stakeholders- already affects many sensitive realms (as in Politics, Social Sciences, or Law). The decision-making power handover to (...) opaque AI systems makes mandatory explaining those, primarily in application scenarios where the stakeholders are unaware of both the high technology applied and the basic principles governing the technological solutions. The issue should not be reduced to a merely technical problem; the explainer would be compelled to transmit richer knowledge about the system (including its role within the informational ecosystem where he/she works). To achieve such an aim, the explainer could exploit, if necessary, practices from other scientific and humanistic areas. The first aim of the paper is to emphasize and justify the need for a multidisciplinary approach that is beneficiated from part of the scientific and philosophical corpus on Explaining, underscoring the particular nuances of the issue within the field of Data Science. The second objective is to develop some arguments justifying the authors’ bet by a more relevant role of ideas inspired by, on the one hand, formal techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and on the other hand, the modeling of human reasoning when facing the explanation. This way, explaining modeling practices would seek a sound balance between the pure technical justification and the explainer-explainee agreement. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, (...) dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes. (shrink)

Modern health care is inextricably bound up with technologically mediated knowledge and practice. It is vital to investigate its use and role in different clinical contexts characterized, on one hand, by face to face practitioner and patient encounters (where technology may be conceptualised as hindering therapeutic relations) and, on the other hand, by practitioners’ encounter with bodily parts in laboratories (where conceiving of patients may be thought of as confounding objectivity). To contribute to the latter, I offer an ethnographic analysis (...) of cytology laboratory practitioners’ work and microscopic assessment of normal and abnormal cells. First, I discuss the biomedical literature on cytology and the quest for a non-variational bodiless vision. Second, I discuss the concept of multistability, first developed by philosopher of technology Don Ihde, here used to analyse technologically mediated perception and how practitioners interact with technology. Combined with long term ethnographic fieldwork it enables access to, and analysis and articulation of the implicit multifaceted practitioner–technology–cell interface embedded in clinical practice and diagnostic processes. I will also address some implications of my analysis for clinical cytology. (shrink)

Heidegger has been blamed for being obsolete, irrelevant, ignorant and even dangerous in relation to contemporary philosophy of technology. Based on mainly two texts from Heidegger’s post-war production, “The Question Concerning Technology” and “Only a God can Save Us”, this commentary to Don Ihde’s article tries to show how Heidegger actually makes sense to philosophy of technology. The sheer fact that many postmodern thinkers, among those Don Ihde, are constantly ‘measuring’ their line of thoughts and use of concepts against Heidegger’s (...) original thinking is proof of this relevance. I think that Heidegger, despite his despicable political and moral convictions, is needed when it comes to a critique and understanding of contemporary technological innovation and development in relation to what it means to be human. Most important is to stress that Heidegger was not a technodystopian, which a thorough reading of the two selected texts clearly shows. On the contrary, Heidegger points at the existential dialectical essence in technology, which means that both damnation and redemption can be mediated by technology. (shrink)

Philosophical and technoculture studies surrounding the existential understanding of the human–technology–world experience have seen a slow but steady increase that makes a turn to material hermeneutics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Ihde in Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1993; Capurro in AI Soc 25(1):35–42, 2010; Romele in Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; among others). This renewed focus makes sense because human–technology–world experiences need to be interpreted. (...) And many of these are more complicated to study, precisely because technology is at the root of the experiences. One interesting subset of technologies is media technologies, also called digital media, which intertwines the device and the content to mediate together in the world (Irwin in Digital media: human-technology connection. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2016). Visual media technologies and media content, together, through what is called moving image technologies, create virtual role-playing, virtual and augmented reality, video games, and social media focused worlds that have become central experiences in contemporary culture. Just as image-based scientific instruments read the world in different ways, so to do these visual mediated experiences. How might this comingled “reading” of technology explain the digital film language and experience? I contend that understanding the existential “early” film experience helps understand the new age of cinema, with implications for digital media, digital representation of the visual, and technoscience and technoculture studies. The material hermeneutics perspective called postphenomenology is one way to study these visually focused human–technology–world perceptual and interpretive experiences. Don Ihde’s methodological framework (1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019) is both an idea from technoscience studies and a set of nuanced vocabulary that helps to explore and reveal variations, patterns, and trajectories of the whole-body experience of technology. This use case will first explore traditional cinema and then the “new age” term “moving image”, to learn more about this complicated and radically transforming technological experience. Work by Don Ihde and Vivian Sobchack is considered. (shrink)

In this contribution the author tries to formulate an approach to the art of living with technology based on Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason, a work often overlooked by contemporary commentators in the philosophy of technology. This approach couples the concept of releasement to insights hailing from Wolfgang Schirmacher concerning Heidegger’s nihilism.

The paper suggests a critique of scientism by revealing the existential genesis of knowledge-constitutive interests in scientific research. This scenario of overcoming scientism is spelled out in terms of the doctrine of cognitive existentialism. On the doctrine?s central claim, a knowledge-constitutive interest is not fixed and determined by a strongly situated epistemic position that is distinguished by invariant norms of theorizing, methodological devices, cognitive aims, goals, and values. In reflecting upon its situated transcendence, scientific research has a potentiality for discarding (...) that form of objectivist realism which is pre-supposed by the ideology of scientism. The paper develops arguments against the essentialist picture of scientific research shared by philosophers as different as Heidegger and Habermas. (shrink)

In this article, we trace and elucidate Heidegger’s radical re-thinking on the relation between science and technology from about 1940 until 1976. A range of passages from the Gesamtausgabe seem to articulate a reversal of the primacy of science and technology in claiming that “Science is applied technology.” After delving into Heidegger’s reflection on the being of science and technology and their “coordination,” we show that such a claim is essentially grounded in Heidegger’s idea that “Science and technology are the (...) Same [das Selbe].” In addition, we argue that, although different ontic epochs can be distinguished in the evolvement of science and/or technology, for Heidegger there is only one unique ontological Epoch of modernity that encompasses various ontic epochs. Therefore, the change from an “epoch of objectivity” to an “epoch of orderability [Bestellbarkeit]” cannot be considered to be an ontological shift. Furthermore, it is not right to ascribe to Heidegger the view that the development of quantum physics signals the beginning of a new ontological Epoch. (shrink)

Marc Van den Bosche suggests that Heidegger’s conceptions of Gestell and Gelassenheit, taken together with his analysis of Nietzschean Nihilism, depicts our era in a way that “supplements” Andrew Feenberg and Don Ihde’s work. Weaving these sources together, he sees the possibility of our becoming “technicians” that “live, in a released way, within the groundless.” Here, I raise some questions about whether the author has really fitted all these sources together and argue that his idea of becoming post-modern “technicians” appears (...) to require that we first practice a very un-Heideggerian kind of “renunciation.”. (shrink)