This paper finds its origin in a debate between Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and Octavio Paz (1914-1998) on what is central to the idea of eroticism. Bataille posits that violence and transgression are fundamental to eroticism, and without prohibition, eroticism would cease to exist. Paz, however, views violence and transgression as merely intersecting with, rather than being intrinsic to, eroticism. Paz places focus on imagination, and transforms eroticism from a transgressive, to a ritualistic act. Eroticism thus functions as an intermediary, turning (...) animal sexuality into ceremony and rite. In this paper, I argue that Paz and Bataille are not fundamentally at odds in their conceptualisation of eroticism. Instead, Paz redefines the locus of eroticism by subverting its unsettling aspects. His conception of eroticism gives precedence to the imagination, which in itself is an act of violation. Imagination transgresses normal life, but this transgression – the violation of the habitual world – also introduces a glimpse of the numinous that Paz associates with belongingness. The paper further explores eroticism, as this is perceived today, and argues that it ultimately eliminates the threshold marked by transgression. The rise of the contemporary pornographic society is marked by a loss of imagination and transcendence, which ultimately reduces the subject into a mere automaton that demands instant gratification. (shrink)

Phenomenologists usually insist that their approach involves going “back” to and “starting” with technoscientific experience—that is, returning to the actual existing or living through of technoscientific life—after centuries of privileging the analysis of how things are “objectively” known and denigrating accounts of how they are “subjectively” lived with. But then who says this and how is this understood? “Who” is really a phenomenologist, when so many diverse thinkers claim the title? This paper considers some of the reasons why this is (...) such a difficult question and argues that it is wrong to look for The Answer to it. (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)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the (...) visible: the essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

Kamphof offers an illuminating depiction of the technological mediation of morality. Her case serves as the basis for a plea for modesty up and against the somewhat heroic conceptualizations of techno-moral change to date—less logos, less autos, more practice, more relationality. Rather than a displacement of these conceptualizations, I question whether Kamphof’s art of living offers only a different perspective: in scale, and in unit of analysis. As a supplement and not an alternative, this modest art has nonetheless audacious implications (...) for the ethics of surveillance. (shrink)

Objectification is a real problem in medicine that can lead to bad medical practice or, in the worst case, dehumanization of the patient. Nevertheless, objectification also plays a major and necessary role in medicine: the patient’s body should be viewed as a biological organism in order to find diseases and be able to cure them. Listening to the patient’s illness story should not be replaced, but, indeed, developed by the physical examination of his body searching for the causes of his (...) complaints. Whereas phenomenologists have so far mainly been identifying the back sides of objectification in medicine, in this paper the aim is to analyze differences between detrimental objectifications and objectifications that do not deprive the patient of his subjectivity but, rather, at least in some cases, may lead the patient to feel more at home with his body. (shrink)

As a distinctive philosophical tradition, phenomenology was founded by Husserl and then developed further — into the domain of technology — by Husserl's most original and important student, Heideg ger. Let us begin with this standard view and then develop..

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 apparent dualism of the instrumentalist and determinist positions through Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. This ontology has recently been used to ground accounts of virtual embodiment. We argue that in addition to explaining away the classical form of technological determinism, it can also phenomenologically ground a novel understanding of technological determinism. Namely, a technological determinism of virtual embodiment. (shrink)

This book addresses an epidemic that has developed on a global scale, and, which under the heading of “addiction,” presents a new narrative about the travails of the human predicament. The book introduces phenomenological motifs, such as desire, embodiment, and temporality, to uncover the existential roots of addiction, and develops Martin Heidegger’s insights into technology to uncover the challenge of becoming a self within the impulsiveness and depersonalization of our digital age. By charting a new path of philosophical inquiry, (...) the book allows a pervasive, cultural phenomenon, ordinarily reserved to psychology, to speak as a referendum about the danger which technology poses to us on a daily basis. In this regard, addiction ceases to be merely a clinical malady, and instead becomes a “signpost” to exposing a hidden danger posed by the assimilation of our culture within a technological framework. (shrink)

The ethics of technology deals with the moral grounds of creating and using devices and technological systems. This paper deals with the ethics of technology from the point of view of postphenomenology – by analysing multistability, mediation and technological intentionality – and of Wittgenstein’s fundamental grammar – by analysing technology as a rule-governed practice. Using these theoretical frameworks, this paper is able to offer a description of the way ethical values are embedded in technology and to (...) present the foundation for a normative ethics of technology. (shrink)

In this chapter, we propose an ecological hermeneutic phenomenology to study both the ontic and ontological structures of new and emerging technologies. In section 2, we first consult the traditional concept of phenomenology to find an entry point for our methodological considerations. It will become clear that Heidegger provides a progressive concept of hermeneutic phenomenology, although we are critical of his essentialism and linguistic focus in which there seems to be no room for the phenomenological consideration of (...) ontic phenomena. The discussion of Heidegger results in a methodological concept of an empirically informed ecological hermeneutic phenomenology that enables us to research how new and emerging technologies impact the World in which we live and act. Subsequently, we critically reflect on the epoché of phenomenology and show that a methodological concept of ecological hermeneutic phenomenology engages in an ecological transduction from technology as thematic artefact to technology as co-thematic ontological structure in which each and every artefact is grounded. (shrink)

This paper aims to highlight the life of computer technologies to understand what kind of ‘technological intentionality’ is present in computers based upon the phenomenological elements constituting the objects in general. Such a study can better explain the effects of new digital technologies on our society and highlight the role of digital technologies by focusing on their activities. Even if Husserlian phenomenology rarely talks about technologies, some of its aspects can be used to address the actions performed by the (...) digital technologies by focusing on the objects’ inner ‘life’ thanks to the analysis of passive synthesis and phenomenological horizons in the objects. These elements can be used in computer technologies to show how digital objects are ‘alive.’ This paper focuses on programs developed through high-order languages like C++ and unsupervised learning techniques like ‘Generative Adversarial Model.’ The phenomenological analysis reveals the computer’s autonomy within the programming stages. At the same time, the conceptual inquiry into the digital system’s learning ability shows the alive and changeable nature of the technological object itself. (shrink)

Insights from the phenomenological tradition of philosophy can be fruitfully applied to ongoing scientific investigations. In what follows, I review and refine a methodology I have developed for the application of concepts from the phenomenology of technology—concepts which articulate bodily and perceptual relations to technology—to a specific context of scientific practice: debate over the interpretation of laboratory images. As a guiding example, I introduce a case study of a contemporary debate over images of Mars which reveal evidence (...) of fluid movement on the planet’s surface in the last decade. Next, the framework of phenomenological concepts is applied to this example, and contrasts are made with the results of previous case studies. I conclude with reflections on the implications of this perspective for both the use of imaging technologies in scientific research specifically, and for the phenomenology of technology generally. (shrink)

Gunter Anders' Philosophy of Technology is the first comprehensive exploration of the ground-breaking work of German thinker Gunter Anders. Anders' philosophy has become increasingly prescient in our digitised, technological age as his work predicts the prevalence of social media, ubiquitous surveillance and the turn to big data. Anders' ouevre also explored the technologies of nuclear power and the biotech concerns for the human and transhuman condition which have become so central to current theory. Babette Babich argues that Anders offers (...) important resources on streaming digital media through his writings on radio, television and film and is, unusually, both a comprehensive and profound thinker. Anders' relationship with key philosophers like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin and his thinking on Goethe, Nietzsche and Rilke is also explored with a focus on the deep impact he made on his peers. It reflects specifically on the intersection of Anders' thought Heidegger and the Frankfurt school and how influential a figure he was on the landscape of 20th century philosophy. A compelling rehabilitation of a thinker with profound contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Philosophy has been always received or bypassed for its resonance or aloofness with the spirit of the time. Should not philosophy/phenomenology of life be expected to do more to ascertain its validity? Should it not pass the pragmatic test, that is to respond directly to the life-concerns of its time? What is the role of the philosopher and philosophy today? Due to the ever-advancing scientific, technological, social and cultural changes that are shaping human life and the life-world-in-transformation, we are (...) desperately seeking a measure to estimate life's unfolding, a compass to stir the course between Scylla and Charibda to maintain human-hood and creative insight for laying the cornerstones for the unforeseeable unfolding of life dynamisms. It is this challenge which philosophy/phenomenology of life meets with underlying ontopoietic unraveling of the hidden logoic concatenations of beingness-in-becoming. The present collection of essays offers contributions to answer this challenge by focusing upon measure, sharing-in-life, intersubjectivity and communication, societal equilibrium, education, and more. It will be of great interest to those working in the fields of Phenomenology, Philosophy, History of Philosophy, and Contemporary Philosophy. (shrink)

Controversy arose when a humanoid robot named “Sophia” was given citizenship and did performances all over the world. Why should some robots gain citizenship? Going beyond recent discussions in robot ethics and human–robot interaction, and drawing on phenomenological approaches to political philosophy, actor-network theory, and performance-oriented philosophy of technology, we propose to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography: we argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were politically choreographed to advance economic (...) interests. Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the performance and movement of robots and illustrating our discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, we explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle and robotic performance advanced the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors. (shrink)

This edited volume explores the intersections of the human, nonhuman, transhuman, and posthuman from a phenomenological perspective. Representing perspectives from several disciplines, these investigations take a closer look at the relationship between the phenomenology of life, creative ontopoiesis, and otherness; technology and the human; art and the question of humanity; nonhumans, animals, and intentionality; and transhumanism. Ontological positioning of the human is reconsidered with regard to the nonhuman, transhuman, and posthuman within the cosmos. Further examination of the artificial (...) and object in the lifeworld is also explored. This volume also pays tribute to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and her methodical contributions to phenomenology. This text appeals to students and researchers of phenomenology worldwide. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

This article investigates the types of intentionality involved in human–technology relations. It aims to augment Don Ihde’s analysis of the relations between human beings and technological artifacts, by analyzing a number of concrete examples at the limits of Ihde’s analysis. The article distinguishes and analyzes three types of “cyborg intentionality,” which all involve specific blends of the human and the technological. Technologically mediated intentionality occurs when human intentionality takes place “through” technological artifacts; hybrid intentionality occurs when the technological actually (...) merges with the human; and composite intentionality is the addition of human intentionality and the intentionality of technological artifacts. (shrink)

In my review, I analyze the main theses of Anastasiya Medova’s monograph entitled Phenomenology of Musical Experience (2021). The author of the book raises the issue of what it is that we generally hear as music, as well as many directly or indirectly related other issues with regard to both the essence and the ontological status of music. According to her, it is only the phenomenological methodology that can provide an answer to these questions, which deals with the specifics (...) of a musical object always in the context of the specifics of musical experience. Particular emphasis in the review is placed on the concept of reduction, as it is used in relation to music. It is designed to clear the experience of all elements not related to music as such, including sensitive shape-associations that often arise while listening to music. Another important point in the study of A. A. Medova is her posing of the question as to the regional nature of music and its possible correlation with the sphere of aesthetic in general. In this regard, I point out that the author of the monograph seeks to justify the irreducibility of music to the aesthetic sphere and that her solution of the problem of the possible regionality of music remains insufficiently determined. I also emphasize that one of the points of interest in the book is that Medova works with specific material, notably with the interpretation of significant works of musical art and the analysis of important theoretical statements about the essence of music. (shrink)

The author examines the pedagogical interpretation and contribution of the Dictionary of Technology and critical revolutionary pedagogy of Paulo Freire and his followers, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren. A comparative ref lection on the Dictionary of Technology and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire most renowned book, is possible due to the clear effort of both works directed against the dehumanization and conversion of the pedagogical process into technology. Freire educational process sees as a simulacrum of the (...) banking system while the Dictionary of Technology very closely, but more generally sees it as the predominance of illusion, no matter who is oppressed by whom. The illusion would exist even in a world without a relationship of dominance, because the dismissal of oppression will not liberate us from the history. (shrink)

Technology is increasingly subject of attention from philosophers. Philosophical reflection on technology exhibits a wide and at times bewildering array of approaches and modes of thought. This volume brings to light the development of three schools in the philosophy of technology. Based on thorough introductions to Karl Marx', Martin Heidegger's and John Dewey's thought about technology, the volume offers an in-depth account of the way thinkers in the critical, the phenomenological and the pragmatic schools have respond (...) to issues and challenges raised by the works of the founders of these schools. Technologies in almost any aspect of human life is potentially subject of philosophical treatment. To offer a focused demonstration of key arguments and insights, the presentation of each school is concluded with a contribution to discussions of educational technologies. In addition to philosophers seeking a valuable and clear structuring of a still burgeoning field, the volume is of interest to those working with educational philosophy and value sensitive design. „Stig Børsen Hansen’s book is a must for all interested in understanding the development of the philosophy of technology and the relation of thoughts of thinkers that have shaped the area. The author presents a new and refreshing take on the ideas from Marx to Marcuse, from Dewey to Latour, and Heidegger to Borgmann. It will engage and hopefully provoke." Dr. Jan Kyrre Berg Friis, University of Copenhagen. (shrink)

Though many of our social, scientific, and medical practices are shaped by technological artefacts, we lack a framework that adequately accounts for the cognitive role such artefacts play. Current approaches to mind and technology interaction often depart from the extended mind thesis, and are cashed out in terms of information-processing. While proposals for mind extension have generated daring new research programs, (post)phenomenologists have argued that the extended mind account of mind-technology interaction is flawed and incomplete. This paper contributes (...) to this debate by presenting a positive proposal for how we may understand mind-technology interaction from an enactive perspective. The proposal does justice to the shaping roles that artefacts play in cognitive processes and aligns with current approaches in philosophy of technology in general and the school of postphenomenology in particular. This provides enactivism with a toolkit that allows them to better understand mind-technology interaction, while simultaneously providing a cognitive underpinning for the postphenomenological framework. (shrink)

Michel Henry is regarded as one of the most important French philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. Yet, he is still not widely cited as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Jean Paul Sartre are. His thought constitutes a philosophy of life, distancing itself not only from the phenomenology of the 20th century, but also from the science and technology inaugurated by Galileo Galilei and Rene Descartes. Furthermore, Leopold Sedar Senghor is an African philosopher (...) whose philosophy has often been misunderstood in both African as well as in most Western philosophical scholarly circles. Critiquing representation in Western thought only makes sense if it is made clear that it is entirely conceivable that this critique squanders its meaning elsewhere, in the East. It is inherent in it. However, very few academics have felt that this should be done. It is essential to make connections, because what Henry discovers puts him in an immediate proximity of the radical approach of Vedanta and the approach of Senghor’s Negritude theory of emotion. The objective of this article is to find significant points of convergence between absolute subjectivity, the idea of affectivity, and Negritude and Vedanta in Henry’s speculative thought. The reading of Henry, Indian philosophy (Vedanta) and Negritude (Senghor) allows for establishing a bridge between Indian philosophy (Vedanta) and phenomenology, most notably a bridge between Negritude and the phenomenology of life. (shrink)

Marcuse was the face of the Frankfurt School during the 1960s and '70s. His eclipse led, among other unfortunate consequences, to the disappearance of his critique of science and technology. That critique is based on an experiential ontology that derives in part from Marcuse’s background in phenomenology. In this paper I trace the roots of that ontology in his early interpretation of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. One-Dimensional Man takes up the phenomenological critique in a Marxist (...) vein. This critique is newly relevant now that we face impending environmental catastrophe due to climate change. Thus the study of Marcuse today is not simply academic, but once again politically significant. (shrink)

This book offers a unique description of how phenomenology can help professionals from medical, environmental and social fields to explore notions such as interaffectivity, empathy, epoche, reduction, and intersubjective encounter. Written by a group of top scholars, it uniquely covers the relationship between phenomenology and bioethics, and focuses not only on medical cases, but also on the environment and emerging technologies. This variety of themes, whilst including techno-ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, and medical ethics, is conducive to appreciating (...) broadly how phenomenology can improve our quality of our life. Despite its difficult themes, the book appeals to an audience of both academics and professionals who are willing to understand how to increase the quality of care in their professional field. (shrink)

This volume explores the broad and rich spectrum of contemporary phenomenological engagement with digital technologies. By focusing on plural forms of the digital, it offers a robust and flexible framework for contemporary phenomenological investigations in the digital age. It contends that the impact of digital technologies on the lifeworld involves both the emergence of novel fields of lived experience in need of phenomenological analysis and the transformation of the method and attitude of phenomenologically oriented philosophers towards the world. The chapters (...) cover topics including immersion in virtual environments, the impact of digital cognitive devices on our perception of time, the invisibility of digital technologies in the lifeworld, the new extension of reality rendered possible by the employment of digital devices, how new technologies affect our intimacy and sexual body, the new methodological paradigm for phenomenological research prompted by digital technologies, the additive upshot of virtual imaginary, the intersection of the real and the virtual in augmented reality experiences, the structures of perception in the regime of digitally generated environments, how it feels like to empathize with others in a regime of virtual reality, process of en-rolling in the constitution of a virtual subject, the transformation of virtual reality into conspiratorial reality by means of on-line media platforms, and the problem of the extent to which technological environments impact human cognitive and perceptual experience. Phenomenologies of the Digital Age will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of technology, science & technology studies, and media studies. (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)

The technological virtual demands philosophical scrutiny. Existing methodologies, like pragmatism and social constructivism, often limit the examination of technology to the social, neglecting questions of embodiment. Said approaches tend to overlook the intricate existential connection between the embodied individual and digital technology artefacts. This article argues that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology may be mobilised to describe, understand and reconceptualise the category of the virtual and the dynamic relation between the digital technology artefact and its user. The result is (...) a clearer description and deeper understanding of the richly intertwined reversible relationship between the embodied individual and the artefactual – two poles or points from which virtual space as emergent perceptual characteristic arises. Questions of the body and the artefactual are therefore not tangential to the question of virtual space; rather, the re-deployment and development of key concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s work shows that such considerations are crucial for the ongoing development of a phenomenological account of the phenomenon of digital technology. We thus see that digital technology artefacts constantly, and in an encompassing manner, challenge perceptual faith, necessitating increased imaginative signification to make sense of a world via these technologies. In this manner, the process of sense-making as regards the self, world and others is modified. (shrink)

Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines is an interdisciplinary study, reflecting the recent emergence of various particular forms of `phenomenological philosophy of ...'. Included are such fields as psychology, social sciences and history, as well as environmental philosophy, ethnic studies, religion and even more practical disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, politics, and technology. The Introduction provides a way of understanding how these various developments are integrated. On the basis of a Husserlian notion of culture, it proposes a generic concept (...) of `cultural disciplines' (which is broader than but inclusive of `human sciences') which subsumes the more specific concepts of `cultural sciences', `axiotic disciplines' (e.g. architecture), and `practical disciplines'. (shrink)

Technology always provides a new perception of the world. However, it is not clear when technology produces “mere” new informations and when it provides something more such as a production of new objects in our world which start to “live” around us. The aim of this paper is to study how technology shapes our surrounding world. The questions which we are going to answer are: Is it really adding new objects to our world? If yes, does every (...) technology have this potentiality? We are going to tackle the problem using a phenomenological and post-phenomenological approach focussing our attention on the perceptual level. Using Husserl’s philosophy we will study how technology are deeply involved in our perception and, thanks to post-phenomenology and its concept of “embodiment relations,” we will be able to determine which kind of technologies have the potentiality to change our surrounding world introducing and producing new objects in it. (shrink)

The living world is expanding thanks to the rapid and massive expansion of new technological capabilities. At the same time, paradoxically, it has been narrowed as thinking itself has become narrower and impoverished. Thinking has been pushed away by knowledge in almost all areas of the living world. Instead of thinking, modern man is becoming more and more curious. The acquisition of massively produced knowledge has become a form of consumption or even of entertainment. New theories that appear every day (...) and reveal the failures of the previous ones only emphasize the limitations and fragmentation of the attitude itself. Although such knowledge is useful in solving practical local tasks, its universal validity is unfounded. What is needed is a more open consciousness which is able to reconcile different modes of experience. The rejection of ancient spiritual contemplating traditions and desacralization have impoverished the ability to express reality. This paper presents—as an attempt to recreate contemplative thinking—the conceptions of Martin Heidegger and Shinichi Hisamatsu, two thinkers living in different cultures. The paper pays a special attention to the way of being. The articulation of the state and the posture of the thinker and his/her attitudes uses concepts, that are often ambiguous, multidimensional, but already capable of articulating phenomena that could not otherwise be named. Such a stance paves the way for creative thinking capable of extending and overstepping the limits of the strict causal Western way of thinking. (shrink)

The present article aims to make good on Roland Barthe’s unfulfilled promise to provide an eidetic phenomenology for the photograph. Though the matter deserves consideration simply because no relevant account has yet been provided, the consequences of adumbrating eight eidetic features, we hope to show, bear directly on the phenomenology of time, the possibility of technological events, and the status of truth as what Heidegger called alētheia . Finally, and most importantly for the enterprise of phenomenological reflection, if (...) we are successful in this endeavor, we shall have established a new way to use eidetic phenomenologies: not for Husserl’s original aim of executing a rigorous science, but in a more Derridian spirit as a way to destabilize consensus. (shrink)

"In his Phenomenology of Cognition, Cassirer provides a comprehensive and systematic account of the dynamic process involved in the whole of human culture as it progresses from the world of myth and its feeling of social belonging to the highest abstractions of mathematics, logic and theoretical physics. Cassirer engages with the most sophisticated and cutting-edge work in fields ranging from ethnology to classics, egyptology and assyriology to ethology, brain science and psychology to logic, mathematics and theoretical physics. His command (...) of philosophy, literature, and the arts is superb. Echoing his work on Kant, Cassirer begins ThePhilosophy of Symbolic Formswith the problem posed by the meaning of being for philosophy since Plato. But Cassirer also shows that this problem gains new significance with Kant and with the development of modern culture. Cassirer weaves his conception of the development of knowledge into a broadly Kantian and German idealist dynamic-historical conception of significance and of experience that refuses to accept a fundamental opposition between literary, philosophical and scientific culture. In consequence of his great vision grounded in careful reflection and argument, Cassirer's systematic conception of the Copernican cosmopolitan-cosmological revolution is still philosophically and scientifically unmatched in contemporary philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the Pacific." - Pierre Keller, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, USA. This new translation makes Cassirer's seminal work available to a new generation of scholars. Each volume includes an introduction by Steve Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and an index. Steve Lofts is Professor of Philosophy at King's University College, Canada. He is the translator of Cassirer's The Logic of the Cultural Sciences and The Warburg Years : Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology. (shrink)

The paper aims to examine the construction, circulation, and transformation of knowledge about man (anthropological knowledge) in human-technology interaction in the 20th century. The analysis focuses on the prerequisites of the industrial working world and its implicit knowledge about human beings. However, the basis and starting point of technical adaptation is usually ignored: The concepts of “man” and the anthropological knowledge gained experimentally from a anthropocentric designed interface. Based on the concept of an intuitive interface design this problem will (...) be investigated. The questions posed by this article as well as the objectives associated with them open up an interdisciplinary framework between philosophy of technology, philosophical anthropology and history of science given that they not only focus – by means of historical reconstruction – on historical changes in technological developments. They also address the issue of generation and transformation of anthropological knowledge in the definitions and interactions of “man” and “technology”. (shrink)

The present text shows that the prevailing view of Martin Heidegger's approach to society and technology is not only based on prejudice, but more importantly works to obscure a more relevant perception of reality. Heidegger's “phenomenological hermeneutic” sought to uncover technology's hidden truth, beyond the appearance of technology as framing our existence (Gestell). Even if we acknowledge that technology has now reached a planetary and all-encompassing dissemination – becoming, in effect, the leading figure of our time (...) – we still need to remain vigilant to the metaphysical notions embedded in such a characteristic. We should seek other ways of living with and within technology. A radical critique should seek topologies and “orders” that are universal and preliminary, so that by potentially exceeding every demarcation we can be liberated to a way of listening – a “hearing” (Hören) – to a “constellation” of a different “essence of technology”. (shrink)

Concatenation, conjunction, and connection -- The sensitive infosphere -- Global skin : a trans-identitarian patchwork -- The aesthetic genealogy of globalization -- Language, limit, excess -- Avatars of the general intellect -- The swarm effect -- Social morphogenesis and neuroplasticity -- The transhuman -- The horizon of mutation -- Consciousness and evolution -- The end.

Grasping the identity of hybrids, that is beings which cross the binarism of nature and technology (e.g. genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), syn-bio inventions, biomimetic projects), is problematic since it is still guided by self-evident dualistic categories, either as artefacts or as natural entities. To move beyond the limitations of such a one-sided understanding of hybrids, we suggest turning towards the categories of affordances and the juxtaposition of needs and patterns of proper use, as inspired by the Heideggerian version of (...) class='Hi'>phenomenology. Drawing upon selected concepts by Heidegger, we argue that hybrids can be conceptualised as a regenerative design and use to serve the planet. We argue that the ideal type of non-exploitative account of hybrids consists of the adaptive approach to the environment, which does not, however, exclude the possibility of designing and constructing new beings. We also point out that hybrids undermine the divide of being destructive/regenerative which marks the boundaries of nature and technology. (shrink)

Extended cognition brings with it a particular phenomenology. It has been argued that when an artifact is integrated into an agent’s cognitive system, it becomes transparent in use to the cognizing subject. In this paper, I challenge some of the assumptions underlying how the transparency of artifacts is described in extended cognition theory. To this end, I offer two arguments. First, I make room for some forms of conscious thought and attention within extended cognitive routines, and I question the (...) close association drawn between attention and effort. Second, I vindicate the importance of paying careful attention to individual differences and the diverse ways in which bodies and technologies can be experienced. I end by offering some hints toward an alternative, and more accurate, account of the phenomenology of extended cognition. (shrink)

James Mensch, 1970 No philosophical activity is immune from the question of its grounds, its origin, its arche. Philosophizing is not carried out in a vacuum. The philosopher in any inclusive view cannot be seen to be a being set apart from the world about which he philosophizes. He is distinct neither from the world nor its history considered in its totality. A truth so obvious requires only a brief meditative reflection: A philosopher sits writing at his desk. Without even (...) raising his head, he directs his glance about him. What is the reality that appears? The most immediate objects of his perception, the pen, the paper, the desk, the printed book which lies open before him, even the words which he writes, all have a historical character. Paper, pen, desk and book, these objects are all the products of a historically defined type of work. They are the creations, the phenomenal manifestations of modern technological work.1 Even the words which he writes presuppose a history, a personal history insofar as these words are not empty signs but rather consist in meaningfully arranged characters, which he has learned to write and which someone has, therefore,. taught him to write. The meaning of words has to be won through a continuing encounter with reality, an encounter both personal and historically transcendent of the individual person, an encounter which is never the same, never repeated in an identical fashion. What is the reality that is present to him now, what is the totality of all that is now confronting us as beginning philosophers? As the above observations point out, the briefest of reflections leads us to the questions of the history and genesis of the things that confront us. But what is the condition of this confrontation, this encounter between the philosophizing subject and the world which he wishes to comprehend? Aristotle noted that all men naturally desire to know. Why? Our question is actually, “How does Being come to know itself?” This, of course, can be... (shrink)

The Anglophone philosophical world is currently riding a swelling wave of enthusiasm for a big, dense, blockbuster of a book by the previously unknown Jena philosopher, George Hegel. His Phenomenology of Spirit, originally in German, now available also in English, picks up and weaves together in a surprising and wholly original way a large number of today’s most fashionable ideas. Although he never comes right out and says so, I take it that the main topic the book addresses is (...) the notion of conceptual content. I say “main” topic—and even that with trepidation—because along the way, Hegel discusses practically everything: history, politics, art, literature, religion, psychology, sociology, natural science, and on and on. One of the masterful features of this magnum opus is the convincing way in which the arguments and considerations he brings to bear, in the course of articulating criteria of adequacy for an adequate semantics (which he thinks is inseparable from an adequate pragmatics), reverberate and ramify throughout our understanding of human culture generally. (shrink)