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  1. Virtual Limitations of the Flesh: Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenology of Technological Determinism.Gregory Morgan Swer & Jean Du Toit - 2021 - Phenomenology and Mind 20:20-31.
    The debate between instrumentalist and technological determinist positions on the nature of technology characterised the early history of the philosophy of technology. In recent years however technological determinism has ceased to be viewed as a credible philosophical position within the field. This paper uses Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to reconsider the technological determinist outlook in phenomenological terms as an experiential response to the encounter with the phenomenon of modern technology. Recasting the instrumentalist-determinist debate in a phenomenological manner enables one to reconcile the (...)
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  • ‘Blessed are the breadmakers...’: Sociophobia, digital society and the enduring relevance of technological determinism.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2023 - South African Journal of Philosophy 42 (4):315-327.
    Technological determinism, as a position on the nature and effects of technology/technologies can be divided into optimistic and critical forms. The optimistic variety, of which contemporary cyber-utopianism is an instance, holds that the development of technology shapes or at least facilitates ameliorative alterations in society. The critical variety, on the other hand, tends to problematise or condemn the positive narrative of technological impact on human existence. Whilst the optimistic form still retains some academic credibility, especially concerning digital technologies, the critical (...)
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  • Living in the age of the embodied screen.Jean du Toit - 2020 - Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology 20 (1):e1876895.
    The technological virtual converges with our contemporary existence in a multitude of ways, which suggests a need to interrogate the question of the virtual existentially. Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological account of embodiment is invaluable in this regard because the virtual is encountered from the basis of the facticity of the embodied individual – a facticity that is closely related to perception and motor intentionality. The current article argues that these characteristics of the body-subject should be taken into consideration in order to (...)
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  • How Technology drives the History of the Green Revolution.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2021 - Capitalism Nature Socialism 32 (4):73-90.
    This paper argues that histories of the Green Revolution are often underpinned by commitments to theoretical models of technology and science which shape the parameters of such narratives in politically normative ways. This paper explores the accounts of the Green Revolution in India given by Vandana Shiva and Govindan Parayil and demonstrates the ways in which these accounts are influenced by their models of technology and science. It is argued that Shiva and Parayil represent key theoretical positions in technological theory, (...)
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  • A Manifesto for Messy Philosophy of Technology: The History and Future of an Academic Field.Gregory Morgan Swer & Jean Du Toit - 2020 - Teorie Vědy / Theory of Science 42 (2):231-252.
    Philosophy of technology was not initially considered a consolidated field of inquiry. However, under the influence of sociology and pragmatist philosophy, something resembling a consensus has emerged in a field previously marked by a lack of agreement amongst its practitioners. This has given the field a greater sense of structure and yielded interesting research. However, the loss of the earlier “messy” state has resulted in a limitation of the field’s scope and methodology that precludes an encompassing view of the problematic (...)
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