In this paper, we introduce a research project on investigating the relation of computers and humans in the field of wearable activity recognition. We use an interdisciplinary approach, combining general philosophical assumptions on the mediating character of technology with the current computer science design practice. Wearable activity recognition is about computer systems which automatically detect human actions. Of special relevance for our research project are applications using wearable activity recognition for self-tracking and self-reflection, for instance by tracking personal activity data (...) like sports. We assume that activity recognition is providing a new perspective on human actions; this perspective is mediated by the recognition process, which includes the recognition models and algorithms chosen by the designer, and the visualization to the user. We analyze this mediating character with two concepts which are both based on phenomenological thoughts namely first Peter-Paul Verbeek’s theory on human-technology relations and second the ideas of embodied interaction. Embedded in the concepts is a direction which leads to the role of technical design in how technology mediates. Regarding this direction, we discuss two case studies, both in the possible using practice of self-tracking and the design practice. This paper ends with prospects towards a better design, how the technologies should be designed to support self-reflection in a valuable and responsible way. (shrink)

Bennett and Hacker criticize a number of neuroscientists and philosophers for attributing capacities which belong to the human being as a whole, like perceiving or deciding, to a “part” of the human being, viz. the brain. They call this type of mistake the “mereological fallacy”. Interestingly, the authors say that these capacities cannot be ascribed to the mind either. They reject not only materialistic monism but also Cartesian dualism, arguing that many predicates describing human life do not refer to physical (...) or mental properties, nor to the sum of such properties. I agree with this important principle and with the critique of the mereological fallacy which it underpins, but I have two objections to the authors’ view. Firstly, I think that the brain is not literally a part of the human being, as suggested. Secondly, Bennett and Hacker do not offer an account of body and mind which explains in a systematic way how the domain of phenomena which transcends the mental and the physical relates to the mental and the physical. I first argue that Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology provides the kind of account we need. Then, drawing on Plessner, I present an alternative view of the mereological relationships between brain and human being. My criticism does not undercut Bennett and Hacker’s diagnosis of the mereological fallacy but rather gives it a more solid philosophical–anthropological foundation. (shrink)

By applying classical and contemporary insights of the phenomenological tradition to key findings within the literature on stereotype threat, this paper considers the embodied effects of everyday exposure to racism and makes a contribution to the growing field of applied phenomenology. In what follows, the paper asks how a phenomenological perspective can both contribute to and enrich discussions of ST in psychology. In answering these questions, the paper uses evidence from social psychology as well as first personal testimonies from members (...) of marginalized groups to argue that subjectively experienced racial oppression is embodied and thus has effects on selfhood that are harmful. More specifically, it makes the case that what are most often considered to be temporary or context-based consequences of ST are in fact more wide reaching and harmful than assumed in that the harms that result from suffering ST become a part of one’s identity, and thus a background lens through which one experiences the world. (shrink)