SUBJECTIVITY AND DIGITAL CULTU 9788855290616, 9788855290623, 8855290614

Table of contents :
Subjectivity and Digital Culture
SUBJECTIVITY AND DIGITAL CULTURE edited by Federica Buongiorno – Bernhard Irrgang
PRELIMINARY NOTES What role does subjectivity play in digital culture? This question implies a clarification, first, of what exa
ABSTRACTS

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AZIMUTH

Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age

VII (2019), nr. 14

Subjectivity and Digital Culture Soggettività e cultura digitale edited by • a cura di Federica Buongiorno - Bernhard Irrgang

Publishing editor Giacomo Scarpelli Editor in chief Federica Buongiorno Advisory board Nunzio Allocca Antonello D’Angelo Paolo D’Angelo Arne De Boever Roberto Esposito Antonello La Vergata Thomas Macho Marcello Mustè Maria Teresa Pansera Fabio Polidori Lorena Preta Vallori Rasini Paola Rodano Wolfgang Rother Emanuela Scribano Francesco Saverio Trincia Christoph Wulf Editorial board Cristina Basili Marco Carassai Simone Guidi Antonio Lucci Igor Pelgreffi Libera Pisano Alberto Romele

AZIMUTH

Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age

VII (2019), nr. 14

Subjectivity and Digital Culture Soggettività e cultura digitale

edited by • a cura di

Federica Buongiorno – Bernhard Irrgang

«Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age» is a semi-­annual journal of philosophy, published by Inschibboleth Edizioni since 2019 and previously published by Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. We have chosen to combine our expertise as a publishing house with the energies, enthusiasm and competences of the Editorial Team, as to develop and improve together a project which we both believe in. Aside from being a stimulating avenue for mutual engagement, this collaboration is the path to be followed to ensure the establishment and continued existence of a high-quality publishing enterprise and scientific project. We trust that «Azimuth» will continue to grow and – as its name implies – become a point of reference for philosophical studies both in Italy and abroad.

All essays are subjected to double blind peer-review. Tutti gli articoli sono sottoposti a doppia blind peer-review.

«Azimuth», VII (2019), nr. 14 Semi-annual review © 2019 Inschibboleth Edizioni Direttore responsabile: Giacomo Scarpelli Cover: Tycho’s Wall Quadrant. An engraving of Tycho Brahe in his Uraniborg observatory on the island of Hven, probably from the 1598 printing of his Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (detail). ISSN (paper): 2282-4863 ISBN (paper): 978-88-5529-061-6 ISBN (e-book): 978-88-5529-062-3 Editorial contact: [email protected] - www.azimuthjournal.com Administrative offices: Inschibboleth Edizioni, via G. Macchi, 94 – 00133 Roma – Italy e-mail: [email protected] - www.inschibbolethedizioni.com

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Contents Subjectivity and Digital Culture

Preliminary Notes....................................................................................

9

Bernhard Irrgang, Embedded Human Subjectivity and Digital Self.........................................................................................

13

Dennis Weiss, On the Subject of Technology..........................................

27

Constanze Fanger, Knowledge and Autonomy. Changes of Perception in a Digital Culture..............................................

41

Galit Wellner, Digital Subjectivity: From a Network Metaphor to a Layer-Plateau Model.............................

55

Friederike Frenzel, Can a Map Be Drawn of the Most Internal World? An Attempt to Reclaim the Common Sense.............................................

67

Manja Unger-Büttner, How I Learned to Smile to Robots. On Anthropomorphism, Empathy and Transparent Technology Design.......

81

Federica Buongiorno, (Self-)Knowledge Through Numbers? Lifelogging as a Digital Technology of the Self........................................

95

Andrea Pace Giannotta, Digital World, Lifeworld, and the Phenomenology of Corporeality.................................................. 109

Lucilla Guidi, How to do Things with Rules? Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the Case of Algorithms.............................. 121 Mathias Fuchs, Mass Observation.......................................................... 137 Nadine Reinhardt, “Work” in Progress. Thoughts on the Change of the Concept of Work............................................................................ 145 Christoph Wulf, The Formation of the Subject in the Digital Culture. Some Considerations, Hypotheses and Research Results Concerning the Education of Young People............................................. 157 **** Abstracts................................................................................................... 171

SUBJECTIVITY AND DIGITAL CULTURE

edited by Federica Buongiorno – Bernhard Irrgang

PRELIMINARY NOTES

What role does subjectivity play in digital culture? This question implies a clarification, first, of what exactly we mean by digital culture, and, second, of what a subject is within digital culture. While the 19th century was characterized by print culture and the 20th century by broadcasting culture, we are now experiencing a new paradigm shift: digital technology has radically changed the way we produce (and consume) information, goods, values, social relationships, institutional bonds, etc. The expression ‘digital culture’ is perhaps too vague and broad to describe all the various phenomena that fall within its range: the influence of new digital media in contemporary advanced societies, the role played by the Internet and social networking on a global scale, the possibilities disclosed by IT, communication by means of digital tools such as smartphones, tablets, laptops etc., gaming, and GPS technologies – just to name a few: these are all aspects that contribute to the construction of a digital culture in the form of an increasingly virtual, augmented and hyperlinked society1. In this context, digitalization is something that we experience on a daily basis and to which we are well accustomed: more than the half of the world population today use the Internet and almost half of these are part of some kind of social network2. For Gen Y (the ‘millennials’ generation) culture is obviously digital, since to most of them digital technology represents the main feature of cultural contents and media. Nevertheless, there is a hidden, dark side to all this: most digital devices are run by algorithms that are opaque to us 1   See: J. Turow – L. Tsui, The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 2008. 2   See: https://wearesocial.com/global-digital-report-2019, retrieved June 20, 2019 (retrieved August 1, 2019).

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as users. The softwares we are all familiar with are designed and programmed for various reasons, often determined by the (neo-liberal) market and interests beyond of our control. Privacy is becoming a great concern when speaking of data sharing and Big Data. Subjects living in such a digital environment are ‘digitalizing’ themselves as well: the massive use of digital apps and devices for the performing of daily activities, (almost) constant online presence, the increasing embodiment of digital tools etc. are radically changing the way subjects perceive and conceive themselves, i.e. the modes of their subjectification. The label ‘digital Self’ can help understand this change by establishing a parallel between subject and culture based on their common feature of being ‘digital’. However, goods, tools, devices, contents, information etc. are not ‘digital’ in the same way as subjects3: subjects can be – more ore less – aware of their being (or not being) digital users of digital products. Digital products and objects cannot (yet) be aware of their digital status. Of course, culture is socially produced by humans through a constant interaction with objects on multiple levels (societal as well as economical, political etc.); and digital goods are produced by ‘us’, with rebound effects on both sides (subjective as well as objective). Nevertheless, this difference should not be overlooked if we are to critically understand – as we aim to do with this issue – not only what a ‘digital Self’ and a ‘digital culture’ are, but also their dark sides and most problematic aspects. To this end, we held an international conference at the Technical University of Dresden in September 2018, on the topic Subjectivity and Digital Culture. We invited scholars from all over to world and with different academic background to come together and discuss problems related to the topic: philosophers, sociologists and media theorists embarked on an interdisciplinary discussion, the results of which – with some integrations and additions – are now collected in this Azimuth issue. The contributions presented here can be grouped into four thematic macro-areas: in the first one (Bernard Irrgang, Dennis Weiss) authors address the relationship between subjectivity and digital culture on a general, theoretical level, providing essential references to understand the topic critically. In the second macro-area, authors (Constanze Fanger, Galit Wellner, Friederike Frenzel, Manja Unger-Büttner) further define the theoretical framework by suggesting a revision of the traditional understanding of digital subjectivity (Wellner), by establishing a connection between digital subjectivity and the common sense theory (Frenzel), and by discussing the most controversial

  See Bernhard Irrgang’s contribution to this volume.

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ethical aspects (Fanger, Unger-Büttner). In the third macro-area, authors (Federica Buongiorno, Andrea Pace Giannotta, Lucilla Guidi) focus on the phenomenological aspects (Giannotta) implied by digital practices and processes such as lifelogging (Buongiorno) and algorithmization (Guidi). In the last macro-area (Mathias Fuchs, Nadine Reinhardt, Christoph Wulf) authors critically analyze three specific fields of implementation of digital culture: Mass Observation (Fuchs), changes in work practices and concepts (Reinhardt) and new perspectives in education (Wulf). With this issue, our aim is to provide an interdisciplinary overview of the most problematic features of digital culture and the digital self according to contemporary debate, which might suggest new directions for future research and collaborative work. Federica Buongiorno TU Dresden, Germany [email protected] Bernhard Irrgang TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

EMBEDDED HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY AND DIGITAL SELF*

The following considerations will not aim primarily for stringent philosophical deductions, but will try to open up a field of dialogue and argumentation. In my opinion, this aligns perfectly with the theme of this issue. The concept of subjectivity of a human bodily subject is touched upon even in premodern times, for instance in the writings of Augustine in the context of his descriptions of the relation between God and human being. But only within the discourse of the methodical approach, the modern experimental and mathematical observation of nature in the works of René Descartes, this concept is systemically implemented. Descartes raises the question of subjectivity in regards to a doubting, a skeptical subject in the course of Cartesian doubt, which means the strain of the possibility to doubt, and to doubt as much as possible. However, he sets aside the worldliness generated with the methodical doubt in an ontologically naïve way to prove the existence of God instead, ignoring the nature of the ego. He assumes the dubitare, which is the widest possible doubt, to be identical with the cogitare, the thinking. Without the Cartesian recourse to prove Gods existence there remain three possibilities which are discussed in the following centuries: First, that thinking is possible as long as the human brain is physically existent. Second, that the subjectivity of the human ego is existent, as long as this ego is alive; which means that it perceives, experiences or thinks. The third is an intermediary position: that the bodily embedded subjectivity can be considered thinking because it is channeled by corporeality. Descartes removes the world-aspect out of the cogitare not least because of the dominant role of the consciousness in modern time philosophy. This *  The text, originally written in German, has been translated by Friederike Frenzel (TU Dresden, Germany).

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means a disregard for the sense of self and other elements that living and experiencing with bodily embedded subjectivity entails1. In the works of Descartes, corporeality (Leiblichkeit) is interpreted as physicality (Körperlichkeit). Later authors like La Mettrie comprehend this as a physicality that can be measured physiologically, and therefore becomes available for scientifical objectification. In the framework of a metaphysical materialism it can be understood as pure factuality. Methodologically, Descartes’ transcendental insight into the subjective matter of scientifical objectivity signifies the fundamental problem, which underlies the reflexive interpretation of human subjectivity and has to be revealed. According to this approach, the mental structures of subjectivity in human corporeality are already shaped. Subjectivity is, at its core, not merely subjective, but real and therefore in a sense also objective. This is Edmund Husserl’s insight. Here follows the compelling conclusion: that a scientific-technological interpretation and definition of subjectivity – just like its digital modeling counterpart – has to incorporate first person perspective and second person perspective into the objective scientific modeling and interpretation. The interpretation of a concept of a self-organized, coherent subjectivity, if it is understood as a transcendental philosophical a priori in empirical manifestation, puts the making of methodological consistency in the place of classical metaphysical or transcendental philosophical universals. It develops a concept of perspectivity, grounded in corporeality (Leiblichkeit) and lifeworld (Lebenswelt), which also functions as a self-explication of subjectivity and manifests in three dimensions: first, in the sensomotoric area of space-time. Second, in the linguistic field of propositions as fundamental expressions with postulated veracity, performed with the three basic perspectives “I, you, they” and the corresponding plural forms: “we, you, they”. And third, in the formal thought process, where intellectual self-reflexive subjectification and mathematical objectification can be brought together, for example in cybernetic model design. The initial, practical handling of subjectivity transforms into understanding until it becomes theoretical and practical explicit knowledge. The sensomotoric-instrumental dimension of handling connects with the linguistic-pragmatic level, which generates epistemic as well as moral normativity. It moves on into the dimension of mathematical calculations, which time and again attempt to justify the linguistic level logically without having to rely on 1   B. Irrgang, Gehirn und leiblicher Geist. Phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Philosophie des Geistes, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007, and Id., Der Leib des Menschen. Grundriss einer phänomenologisch-hermeneutischen Anthropologie, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009.

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the handling dimension and its theory. You can find a more in-depth explanation of what I presented here in a somewhat condensed manner in my books, published 2007 and 20092, and in a book, which will be published 2019 in English, titled Embedded Subjectivity & Perspectivity. There, a phenomenological hermeneutics of factuality will be laid out, which enables an epistemology of mental reality, subsequent to a scientific philosophy of several epistemologies of individual scientific disciplines. Instead of metaphysics, ontology and logic with their classical interpretation of the mind, I propose an epistemology of the mind and of knowledge, or rather, of subjectivity as an updated version of a Philosophy of Mind with its features. These are, first, sensomotoric function and implicit knowledge. Second, verbal language and its components of semantic and explicit knowledge as well as third, the embedded mental, mathematical knowledge about structures and networks. That way, a phenomenological hermeneutics of natural evolutionary and mental cognitive factuality can be formed. The experience structure of the bodily self can be described within a phenomenological hermeneutics of handling. In doing so, the role of philosophy consists in the interconnected, intertwined thinking of lifeworld (Lebenswelt, as the everyday world) and sciences. Factual mental competences usually possessed by human beings are based on cognitive competences, which other biological beings and even technical artifacts may exhibit. These cognitive competences are considered to be pre-stages of the mental competences of human bodily subjectivity. They accrue from cognitive behaviors, which can be measured and reconstructed methodically on the base of individual sciences: namely within the theories of evolutionary epistemology and Neural Darwinism with their evolutionary genetical aspects. In the course of human history and the development of material culture in connection with the increasing growth of the human brain, communicative behaviors in particular evolve. They become the foundation for a linguistic-mathematical cultural development. Therefore, humans are able to create references to the universal, the single entity, or the mathematical infinite. The human ability to view the world scientifically rests upon this. This means that philosophy is not a “view from nowhere”, as Nagel puts it, but a way to observe and to experiment, which is integrated into the evolutionary process itself and allows an integral experience, from the outside as well as from within. This is how a phenomenological hermeneutics of the natural factual as well as the mental factual can constitute itself and can contribute to a hermeneutical phenomenology of a human-bodily subjectivity.   See note 1.

1

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I want to suggest the human competence of handling behavior, physical movements, thoughts and ideas (aims and intentions), implicit and explicit knowledge, that is to say, the brain patterns of experience and behavior control, as a basic model. For brain research, activity potential in certain brain areas is measured. Furthermore, it is possible to identify specific genes to be involved in the creation of certain ideas and behaviors. Neuronal self-organization, pattern and structure formation are largely responsible in the process of experiencing. To experience is a result, which means, it has to be considered as a pattern or structure which allows handling and leads to implicit knowledge in the forms of “Know-how” and “Knowing-that”. There are very different forms of “Know-how” in very different brain areas – about 200 to 300 different brain areas, according to the current state of knowledge3. Personal knowledge can be assumed under the terms of the genetic phenomenology of knowledge. Additionally, a second condition has to be considered: the observer is part of the system they observe. This leads to problems with the self-relation and self-reference of the observer’s position within the process of observing. The human mind based on the subjectivity of the human bodily subject includes implicit and explicit knowledge, “Know-how” and “Knowing-that”. This implies competences and skills, which – in the spirit of Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind – enable handling, originating from different locations in the brain, as a manifestation of implicit and explicit knowledge. According to AI theories, emotions are swift decisions based on gut instinct and cannot allow a proper handling. On the base of a complex interplay of hormones, handling does not depend on knowledge but on the evolutionary grown, emotional, quick dealing with tricky situations of the natural as well as the social kind. Only a small part of what constitutes awareness is based on unconsciously processed information, rather it requires explicit thought and knowledge. For human beings, this includes semantic knowledge and competent, linguistic dealing with the abstract. One may also observe set information flows in the animal world, but only human beings rely on the self, the ego as the highest instance of subjectivity and for ultimate decision making. The human consciousness as awareness is based on a process of feedback effects in the areas of implicit and explicit knowledge, which eventually makes action and practice possible.

  M. Kaku, Die Physik des Bewusstseins. Über die Zukunft des Geistes, Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2017, p. 50. 3

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In the debate surrounding a hypermodern Philosophy of Mind between Neural Darwinism, brain science and the various versions of the AI hypothesis the discussion continues about the nature and structure of the human bodily mind and the consciousness. The thesis of AI as a machine feigning intelligence (schwache KI-These) considers expert systems to simulate the biologic-electrical dimension of natural, or rather, human intelligence. Whereas the starke KI-These outright aims to simulate the physical-deductive dimension of natural, human intelligence. One has to consider here that it is impossible to simulate the hormonal structure of the human bodily subjectivity, as well as its intellectuality. The space-time structure of human subjectivity is in its perspectives spanned and constituted between the fundamental factors of having a point of view and a tiered horizon due to the human bodily mind, and it is able to constitute an individual life story on the base of memory and recollections, which is produced by the ego, or the self. This is in contrast to the objective structure of space-time based on gravitational waves, where time as a component is not required to make an appearance in theory. Signals of the internal environment (inneres Milieu) of the human biological organism, which is integrated however by the signature of its own inherent subjectivity, are the starting point of the human bodily subjectivity. It is possible that they are created by the brains pattern formation. This means that the subjectivity of the human bodily subject is based – at least partly – on the signal structure of the neural processes as well as on the bodily inner milieu. The self-organization of the signal structure, which surmises a genetic-epigenetic mesh of expressions, enables the genesis of a biological developmental path, which we know as the history of human development and for which interaction with itself as well as the relevant embedding factors are fundamental. The subjectivity of the human bodily subject rests upon the space-time theory of subjectivity and its perspectivity as the foundation of the genesis of a developmental path towards subjectivity4. The process of awareness is connected to a shift from an implicit to an explicit state, or rather, level of knowledge. One can find the perspective dimensioning of human bodily subjectivity at the level of implicit as well as explicit knowledge. Thereby, it is possible to determine the levels of awareness by the number of feedback loops. This means that the awareness in its degree of complexity becomes calculable in the scientific sense. In his Paradigm of Physicalism, Kaku proposes that awareness should be understood as a 4  See B. Irrgang, Posthumanes Menschsein? Künstliche Intelligenz, Cyberspace, Roboter, Cyborgs und Designer-Menschen – Anthropologie des künstlichen Menschen im 21. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005.

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phenomenon that actively constitutes awareness on recursion level five, which means self-organization. Human awareness or consciousness can thus be modeled as a process, which is determinable and calculable using numerous feedback loops and a model of its embedding factors. It allows to execute operations that enable self-preservation and make further operations possible. With this model, a consciousness of machines is – to a certain degree – imaginable. Furthermore, one can develop models of animal intelligence, as well as a concept of human action and collective practice. I disagree with points that Kaku makes in the work he published in 2017: I suspect that a consciousness with just a few feedback loops is impossible. Kaku describes feedback loops often as stimulus-response profiles. That would make consciousness calculable based on number and complexity. But it is fundamental that we distinguish model calculation and the comprehension of models. Brain activity produces radio waves that a computer can pick up on. By the EEG, thoughts can be depicted as activity patterns and algorithms can compute them, phonetically or as a pattern. After long work, Jack Gallant was able to identify these thought patterns in the MRI – not the artificial intelligence detects those, but the experimenter! This shows that it is feasible to approach the human mind with scientific means. On this basis, “Brain Computer Interfaces” (BCIs) are possible, and even today stroke or paraplegia patients can initiate special programs with just one click. Initial models are technically feasible, so that the mind may control the body. This technology might also mean that a revolution in prosthetics is upon us5. Connections between two brains or maybe even with artificial intelligence might create a “Brain-Net” and help to technically produce exoskeletons, avatars and surrogates. To operate machines directly with thoughts seems realizable6. Kaku declares that an emancipation of the human mind using artificial intelligence but forgetting about our evolutionary origin will lead us into demise, which makes it so important to think about the time after the release of AI. It might happen that some try to create for instance an artificial hippocampus or an artificial human memory. The hormonal encoded memory will be transformed into electrical impulses in the hippocampus, which then can be decoded by machines. In this scenario, the semantic memory is also electric. This opens up opportunities for manipulation, as someone could plant false memories in our heads that we never actually experienced. On one

  Kaku, Die Physik des Bewusstseins, p. 120 and 125.   Ibidem, p. 144.

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hand, this could lead to fabrication of personal biographies, which might be unlawful, even if the consent of the person concerned is acquired. A wider memory could, on the other hand, enhance our own subjectivity and biography. Einstein’s Brain raises the question concerning the enhancement of our intelligence. Then again, we know Hebb’s dictum that practice makes perfect. Having said that: stem cells and genetics remain of the greatest importance with regard to our intelligence7. Kaku claims that, from a biological point of view, there is no evolutionary pressure to create human beings with ever increasing intelligence8. I certainly doubt that, but, setting aside the biological point of view, it remains that humans and their technological embedment themselves create such a selection field. Because of these new developments, physicists aim and attempt to understand the incoming information of the brain and sort it into patterns. There are first tries to photograph a dream. Could it be possible to enter another person’s dream? Could another person’s consciousness be controlled? Experiments looking into this question were conducted at the time of the Cold War, albeit these have not been reviewed by independent scientists. The same applies to brainwashing procedures. Here lie chances for therapeutic applications: one could search and find methods to free the mind out of the imprisonment that are psychological diseases. To calculate and to understand are ways of handling that are recursive: clear and transparent for themselves. Cognitive patterns of the sensomotoric and the intellectual kind can be established to this end. This way a digital self should be constructed – or so the supporters of “self-thinking” machines believe. But robots are still specialists, and they are not suitable for everyday life. Possible types of a silicon-based consciousness can be described9. Emotional robots simulate emotions, or rather, they perform behaviors which suitable human spectators then interpret as emotional behaviors. Robots pretend to be emotional, that is, if they could actually and properly pretend. In the human brain, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for rational thinking. Fruitful approaches could arise if one would compare a mental model and digital calculations of the human bodily subjectivity. I think that a replication of the brain’s neuronal network is only feasible to a certain extent, because the technical separation of hardware and software that is fundamental in the computer field has no counterpart in the human brain. An identification of brain and computer is impossible; there is no computational   Ibidem, p. 210.   Ibidem, p. 234. 9   Ibidem, p. 326. 7 8

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starting material for thought processes like subjectivity. Computer modeling leads to constructive thinking, or rather, constructing. Human understanding arises from bodily thinking (leibliches Denken), which gathers shapes and performs pattern formations. It does not calculate, and cannot be modeled and simulated by computers. The theory of the “self-thinking” AI surmises an outright model-world, a model-Platonism. If robots had self-awareness, it would be self-awareness without subjectivity and not a self in a human bodily sense. The theory of the “self-thinking” robot is an excess of physical reductionism and an axiomatically based, mathematical definition of self-awareness, far from reality. It situates the subjectivity of the human bodily subject in the world of virtual reality. Sure: In this world, a self-model of a silicon-based consciousness might be programmable. If we use “reverse engineering” on the basis of top-down conclusions to recreate our brain and comprehend its construction plan, we will not discover the material structure of the brain which is so imperative for a bodily embedded subjectivity and substantial life story. Lifeworldly embedded and analogically encoded in long-term memory and autobiographical remembrance, it can be memorized and recalled. Results of Lifelogging as objectifications of the own life story could therefore be interpreted as surrogates for a personal life in a virtual reality. What is a mind which is freed from its body? Is the mind pure energy? Physical reductionism claims that the laser beam of a brain scan contains all necessary information to reconstruct a conscious being. That could be of use, for instance after a long flight in space10. But the reconstruction remains strictly in model space, the original with its bodily subjectivity cannot be matched in its complexity. I therefore conclude that the supporters of “self-thinking” AI represent a somewhat dated, outworn, dualistic thinking and that a hypermodern Philosophy of Mind could overcome this and provide a fresh solution. The act of idealizing the absolute or pure mind, which was called solipsism, lies at the origin of European nihilism. Klingemanns Nachtwachen von Bonaventura were a response to the position of Fichte, written in the style of a satirical realism11. The thesis of “self-thinking” AI is a reflection of a technological Platonism and a complete physical naturalization of the human mind, disregarding the human body and human culture in general. The neglect   Ibidem, pp. 411-413.  See B. Irrgang, Metamorphosen eines „satirischen Realismus“. Zweifelsexperimente zwischen Spätaufklärung und Frühromantik in Deutschland, in H. Körner – C. Peres – R. Steiner – L. Tavernier (ed. by), Die Trauben des Zeuxis. Formen künstlerischer Wirklichkeitsaneignung, Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlag, 1990, pp. 201-233. 10 11

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of the human body and of biology by the supporters of “self-thinking” AI indicates yet another problem: the neglect of ecology. In light of the climate catastrophe this points to severe complications in regard to appropriate creation and design of technology. Silicon-based consciousness would be the consciousness of an extraterrestrial12. While the expansion into space and the possible biological evolution of extraterrestrial intelligent life are interesting philosophical problems, I, for one, will not accept this solution for our environmental problems. Before we can hope to obtain even remotely compelling scientific observations and results on the subject of the human consciousness, we have to alter our ideal of objectivity, especially in the natural and technical sciences. We have to be able to integrate the first and the second person perspective into the scientific observation of human and animal intelligent behavior and into modern natural sciences and technology in general. Only then an overarching theory between natural sciences and humanities research will become a realistic objective we can work towards to. Founded in 2007 in the USA, the Quantified Self-community gains more and more supporters yearly, since 2011 in Germany as well. All health-related data is recorded and behavior-related information gathered to deduce insights about one’s own personal lifestyle13. Health monitoring is no longer the physicians’ matter, instead, the individual takes it into their own hands – and shares their results with their community. This means a very literal understanding of individualized medicine. The patient becomes the doctor’s assistant. But primarily, an emerging market opens up14. It is possible to wear a camera on one’s head and to record one’s personal daily routine from one’s personal perspective. The challenge is to edit down the enormous flood of pictures and to make it available for a later review. This way, a photographic memory of one’s own life comes into being15. Food intake can be controlled, a mood barometer can be linked, the graphs, curves, lines of dreams and sleep can be displayed16. One can even decode one’s own genes: the result is mass individualization17.

  Kaku, Die Physik des Bewusstseins, p. 426.  See C. Grasse – A. Greiner, Mein digitales Ich. Wie die Vermessung des Selbst unser Leben verändert und was wir darüber wissen müssen, Berlin, Metrolit, 2013, pp. 21-23. 14   Ibidem, pp. 25-27. 15   Ibidem, pp. 34 f. 16   Ibidem, pp. 42-47. 17   Ibidem, p. 57. 12 13

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By means of data collection, the illusion spreads that all bodily functions can be controlled completely. This leads to a loss of healthy self-awareness. A dictatorship of health forms and threatens. Obsessive self-examination, with smartphones and other, increasingly sophisticated gadgets to monitor the human body, incorporates the phone as another body part. The scientific self-observation arises from the desire to rationalize, to discipline and optimize oneself – along with a distaste for an external, controlling authority and with growing enthusiasm to make the invisible visible and countable18. The underlying fear is to not be able to keep up anymore with those who are deemed to be “super-fit”. The technical self-conception of humans obscures the traditional, emotional dimensions19. In conventional medicine, technical diagnostics are often just a legal safety feature for the attending physician. Why should we, the patients, emulate him20? In the past, we did enquire verbally. Today, we enquire with tests and measurements. We count, instead of recounting21. Persons whose professions demand enthusiasm for technology anyway can carry their technophilia seamlessly into their private lives. For some time now, in this digital society, everything moves toward the digital self. But what the digital self currently does in their own right, can easily turn into controlling health monitoring by the whole of society22. Many users overlook the danger of a health dictatorship, in which self-measurement would be mandatory for every citizen. It seems that the era of the Human-Machine is not far23. This way, new ideas of normality and of community are emerging, conveyed through the medium of technology. The “new human” – measured, scaled and assessed on their usefulness for certain purposes – does not fit our classical, humanistic conception of humans. At the same time one has to admit that the “self-measurement scene” is a lively bunch full of highly creative oddballs. However, the technological side is still overemphasized. In the end, the “self-measurement movement” of today is all about the right of the individual to autonomously control their own body24. Still, we should not forget and emphasize that during the history of mankind humans evolved into a unique bodily existence within an emotional community with others.

  Ibidem, pp. 64-67.   Ibidem, pp. 70ff. 20   Ibidem, p. 94. 21   Ibidem, p. 99. 22   Ibidem, pp. 102-105. 23   Ibidem, p. 130. 24   Ibidem, pp. 165-167. 18 19

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The digital self is a concept of self-objectification and self-instrumentation. Ultimately, it leads to a degeneration of the concept of the personal life story, which was told traditionally in the linguistic forms of autobiographies, confessions and diaries25. The depreciation of the human body and of human communication are characteristics of the digital age. Personalized healthcare, initially the intensification of the dialogue between doctor and patients, is re-interpreted as a preparation for the “self-­ technicalisation” to quantify the own ego and the own self. The “self-measurement movement” can be interpreted as an outcome of an autonomy and subjectivity under threat – maybe even as a result of the same intellectuality which developed first, evolutionary speaking, inside a human mind. This way, a controlling society could be created in which humans are not supervised and controlled by other humans, but by machines, all in consequence of engineering methods. The main beneficiary here is the digital economy, which continually creates and taps into new customer groups. Humans are beings of almost limitless possibilities. Space travel, jet planes, deep-sea diver, achievements and records in modern sports – all this was the realization of an immense anthropological potential, which until now has never been transhuman in the least. Today, we do not have to do this by ourselves anymore, instead we have new technology to calculate and measure us. Following a natural cultural development something formed in the last 35.000 years of human history which I want to call the explosion of the creative human mind. Now, a completely different creativity could replace this human biological existence. Instead of improving our own bodily competences, we focus on the technological handling of ourselves and of others and on the consumption of cultural goods and services. The loss-free copying of text, music and films on the internet makes this even easier. The concept of the autonomous self is massively transformed by the emerging technological culture. Informational totalitarism leads to a society of surveillance and control as self-discipline leads to rationalization. Health becomes task and religion. The

25  See B. Bernhard, Die Maschinisierung des Subjektes und die rationale Konstruktion der Gesellschaft. Künstliche Intelligenz als Mäeutik eines neuen Bildes vom Menschen und der Art seines Zusammenlebens?, in J. Schmidt (ed. by), Denken und denken lassen. Künstliche Intelligenz. Möglichkeiten, Folgen, Herausforderungen, Neuwied – Kriftel – Berlin, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1992, pp. 115-154, and B. Irrgang, Humanismusstreit um die „Künstliche Intelligenz“, in G. Kaiser – D. Matejovski – J. Fedrowitz (ed. by), Kultur und Technik im 21. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt – New York, Campus Verlag, 1993, pp. 107-114.

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cult of the body and the feeling of inadequacy are two sides of the same coin. Topics of the modern lifestyle, its language and praxis are treated increasingly almost in a religious way. Body cult can also be interpreted as a repressed fear of death. But the problem is that the fear we feel because of our mortality never truly vanishes, it can only be confined26. Lifelogging enables a person to manage their innermost self in a sophisticated way. New social classes which oppose traditional economical allocations form in the age of the digital aura. They will transform into information classes, and to belong in them will mean an access to data, while at the same time data will ultimately determine class belonging. Enormous fascination of technology is woven into Lifelogging and Big Data27. Life in the society of data will be one thing above all others: disappointing. Digital self-measurement systems and life-logging devices will not be able to fulfil the many promises of a better life, health, performance and security. In a sense, advocates for self-measurement mistake the measurability of the world as the reality of their lifeworld (or Lebenswelt). It is a merely superficial cover up concealing that we live in a society of fear. We try to shield ourselves from everything: demands for meaning, the other, conflicts and all hazards of life we can think of. This way, the fetish of transparency arises28. Visibility becomes a trap and a “voluntary obligation”29. To understand life, it has to be assessed in its entirety30. Ivan Illich coined the term viability (or conviviality) for the humanity of technologies. But the viability of modern digital selves is lost the same second they enforce conformity and punish deviations. The solution is not to stop collecting data altogether, but to do it another way. We have to risk new approaches to reassure us in our own existence31. Viability means also to deal with data in everyday life differently, to deliberately use it not only to control deviations. Not really the data itself harms us, but the self-branching usage of it. We have to learn to handle the data we produce differently. At the end of the day, it will matter if we counted the world or recounted it32.

26   S. Selke, Lifelogging. Wie die digitale Selbstvermessung unsere Gesellschaft verändert, Berlin, Econ, 2014, pp. 245-248. 27   Ibidem, pp. 252-254. 28   Ibidem, pp. 263-278. 29   Ibidem, p. 285. 30   Ibidem, p. 305. 31   Ibidem, pp. 316 ff. 32   Ibidem, pp. 320-322.

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In closing, I want to praise unpredictability. While they might want to minimize suffering and optimize human life technically, seemingly irrefutable doctrines of salvation still destroy that what constitutes our being: coincidences, emotions, sensuality, things beyond control, to fail despite having good intentions, successes and defeats, all these things inherent to human life. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to people who engage in progress all too eagerly and who cling to the zeitgeist in an all too conformist manner “legionaries of the moment” (Legionäre des Augenblicks)33. I do not think that the revolutionary change or conversion propagated by Lifelogging is revolutionary enough. The transformation – which should be our goal for the digitization – does not need new preachers of the Future, it needs workers at the Now for a Future. The significance of science will increase, even in philosophy. But our knowledge has to transform. The self-care about one’s own life story: Lifelogging is the technological refined other side of this deeply human aspect of dealing with oneself. The personal life story is the groundwork on which morality can grow. Bernhard Irrgang TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

  Ibidem, p. 325.

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To open a space in which to think about subjectivity and the digital culture, we might begin with a youthful avatar of a human future lived in the company of digital technologies. Sophie Hawkins, the youngest child of Joe and Laura Hawkins, has bonded indelibly with the various synthetic life forms that have been brought into her home. Perhaps too indelibly. Displaying signs of unconscious mirroring behavior, Sophie is diagnosed with Juvenile Synthetic Overidentification Disorder (JSOD). She longs for the perfection and emotional stability of synthetic life forms and is one of a growing number of human children who pretend to be synthetic. As a therapist explains this new disorder to Joe and Laura: Therapist: Basically, the patient identifies as Synthetic. Joe: So she wants to be one of them? Therapist: Perhaps she wants to be treated like one. We know Synths are incapable of conscious thought, but to a child, they’re as real as you and I. Perfect, kind, gentle versions of all the adults around them. They never fight, they never get upset, they never worry or let you down. It’s also possible that for Sophie, the boundaries between what is considered Synthetic and what is considered human have been blurred somehow1.

The therapist counsels that the best thing now for Sophie is human contact. «No Synths, just her mum and dad, family and friends». Sophie is a child character on the AMC drama Humans. Humans tells the story of a near future in which synthetic life forms, known as synths, have

  C. Tibbets (Writer) – J. Barton (Director), Humans, Episode 4 (12 March 2017) [Television Series Episode], produced by C. Fry, AMC Network, 2012. 1

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become common helpmates in all walks of life, and focuses on the domestic life of the Hawkins family and the consequences that result from Joe’s decision to purchase a synth and bring it into his family home, including Sophie’s diagnosis of JSOD. It is interesting for its focus on what happens when we introduce sociable robots into the sphere of the family where children are raised and nurtured and where they learn to be human. In this essay, I use JSOD as a prism through which to think about how we ought to address subjectivity in the digital culture, drawing on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s philosophy of technological mediation. Verbeek’s framework for analyzing technology is particularly robust, synthesizing the insights of Bruno Latour and Don Ihde, among other figures, and directly addresses the technologically mediated character of subjectivity. More recently, Verbeek has argued that beyond an empirical turn, philosophy of technology needs to make an ethical turn, incorporating into his framework Michel Foucault’s technologies of the self, with a view toward developing an ethics of accompaniment whose task is to «equip users and designers with adequate frameworks to understand, anticipate, and assess the quality of the social and cultural impacts of technologies»2. This essay raises the issue whether Verbeek’s framework is adequate to the task of addressing the dilemma suggested by Sophie’s disorder, if indeed it is a disorder. I will argue that Sophie’s case presents challenges to Verbeek’s framework that can best be met by philosophy of technology making a third turn, beyond the empirical and ethical turn, situating analyses of technology in an account of human persons informed by feminist theory. Philosophy of technology needs to make an anthropological turn to fully engage with the case of Sophie and the place of subjectivity in the digital culture. 1.  Sophie’s Challenge Humans problematizes the dilemma of posthuman subjectivity in the digital culture, reflecting a sentiment expressed by media studies scholar Mark Poster that in everyday life we are witnessing a battleground over the nature of human identity. If the old order has its way, identities will be stabilized, and information machines will become as invisible as they will be ubiquitous. But if alternatives are devel  P. Verbeek, Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things, Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 165. 2

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oped, a global space of humachines may emerge whose life task becomes precisely the exploration of identity, the discovery of genders, ethnicities, sexual identities, personality types that may be enjoyed, experienced, and also transgressed3.

The crisis Sophie and her family face is the crisis of self and subjectivity in the 21st century. Should they seek to stabilize her identity allowing the «old order» to have its way or ought they to allow Sophie to explore new forms of identity and discover a potentially transgressive subjectivity? Is Sophie a troubled child in need of therapy or part of a youthful vanguard seeking a kind of Foucauldian limit experience in the dissolution of the subject? Sophie’s dilemma mirrors a debate that has been taking place for well over thirty years regarding the impact of digital technologies on subjectivity. Over the past decade, a variety of theorists and technologists have decried the impact of digital technologies on subjectivity, especially on children and teens. In the popular press, blogger Andrew Sullivan, in an essay titled I Used to Be a Human, chronicles his «distraction sickness»4. American psychologist Jean Twenge’s essay for «The Atlantic», Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?, was one of the magazine’s most popular essays5. Sven Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies and Changing the Subject argues that modern technology leads to the dissolution of the self, suggesting that «being online and having the subjective experience of depth, of existential coherence, are mutually exclusive situations»6. Similar arguments are made by Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains7 and Sherry Turkle in Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other8. In a 2018 series on the «new digital divide», The New York Times reported that while large U.S. tech companies design ever more distracting technologies, often selling them to schools, their employees are increasingly concerned about limiting their children’s screen time and enforcing tech bans. As the article notes, echoing Sophie’s therapist’s advice, «(…) in the last year, a fleet of high-profile Silicon Valley defectors have been sounding alarms in increasingly dire terms about what these gadgets do to the human   M. Poster, Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006, p. 230. 4   A. Sullivan, I Used To Be a Human, «New York», September 19, 2016. 5   J. Twenge, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?, «The Atlantic», September 2017. 6   S. Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies, New York, Fawcett, 1994, p. 219. 7   N. Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, New York, Norton, 2010. 8   S. Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, New York, Basic Books, 2011. 3

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brain. Suddenly rank-and-file Silicon Valley workers are obsessed. No-tech homes are cropping up across the region. Nannies are being asked to sign no-phone contracts»9. On the other hand, a number of media theorists argue that owing to our technologically mediated lives we are witnessing a paradigm shift in how we understand subjectivity. Allucquére Rosanne Stone argues that digital technologies have given birth to a new technosocial space, creating a space for a transformative legitimization of multiplicity and undermining received social and cultural norms concerning the meaning of «person» and «body»10. Mark Poster makes similar claims in regard to the mode of information, arguing that the introduction of new communications technologies has led to changes in communication patterns involving changes in the subject and our experiences with electronic media constitute us in different ways11. Mark Deuze suggests that living in media as we do today gives rise to a new ontological experience uniting the posthuman and the zombie. «We are all zombies, in that the boundaries between us and our media – between humans and machines – have blurred, our lives run concurrent with technologies, and the metaphors we live by complicate categorical distinctions between living and dead matter»12. From this perspective, Deuze might observe that in performing synth subjectivity, Sophie Hawkins is simply enacting the posthuman condition of living in media. The case of Sophie, then, serves to crystalize a debate around the nature of subjectivity in our technologically mediated culture. It also serves to challenge philosophy of technology’s traditional focus by situating the problem of subjectivity in a register unfamiliar to much philosophy of technology, a domestic register revolving around home, family, and gender. In addressing subjectivity, western philosophy generally and philosophy of technology more specifically has often ignored that subjects start out as infants and children, that their subjectivity is something of an achievement, often made in a domestic context in which they are still today largely cared for by women. Jane Flax has observed that Western philosophy has often denied early infantile experience and women’s activity in the house and failed to inquire into how subjectivity emerges and we become persons. This is as true of philosophy

  N. Bowles, A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley, «The New York Times», October 29, 2018, B1. 10   A. Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1995, p. 59. 11   M. Poster, The Mode of Information, Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 1990, p. 11. 12   M. Deuze, Living as a Zombie in Media, «Matrizes», 7 (July/December 2013) 2, p. 118. 9

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of technology where, despite its empirical turn, the user of technology often remains elusively abstract. Sophie’s appropriation of synth subjectivity in a domestic context challenges a philosophy of technological mediation to address concerns often marginalized in philosophy of technology. 2.  Sophie and Technological Mediation Verbeek’s philosophy of technological mediation is one of the most well-­ developed frameworks in philosophy of technology today. It is also clearly focused on the question of subjectivity. As he notes, «Given the technologically mediated character of subjectivity, answering the question what kind of subjects we want to be is one of the major challenges of our technological culture»13. Verbeek aims to move beyond the autonomous subject and develop a relational view in which neither subject nor technology have separate existence and each co-constitutes the other. Technology and the human being are not two fundamentally distinct spheres in which the human being is or ought to be sovereign over technology. Rather they are inextricably interwoven with one another. Verbeek’s recognition of the radically mediated character of the subject draws him to Foucault’s technologies of the self, which he adapts into a form of technological ascesis. «In our culture, technology is one of the most important powers that help shape subjectivity. Technological ascesis consists in using technology, but in a deliberate and responsible way, such that the self that results from it – including its relations to other people – acquires a desirable shape»14. The central question of a technological ascesis becomes what do we want to make of human beings. The interwoven character of humans and technology becomes the starting point of ethical reflection. In advocating an ethics of design and use, Verbeek suggests that the art of living in a technological culture is about shaping our own mediated subjectivity by developing responsible forms of technology design and use15. The human capacity of reflection enables us to work out an active relationship to these mediations and to modify them in order to style and codesign our mediated

  P. Verbeek, The Technological Mediation of Morality: A Post-Phenomenological Approach to Moral Subjectivity and Moral Objectivity, 2007, p. 22 (accessed June 19, 2019 at https:// research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-technological-mediation-of-morality-a-post-phenomenological-a). 14   Ibidem, p. 22. 15   Verbeek, Moralizing Technology, p. 157. 13

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moral subjectivity16. One of the foremost tasks of philosophy of technology, Verbeek maintains, is the development of an ethics of accompaniment that integrates the empirical and the ethical turns of philosophy of technology and equips users and designers with a framework «to understand, anticipate, and assess the quality of the social and cultural impacts of technologies»17. Verbeek’s philosophy of technological mediation goes a long way toward developing a framework addressing the challenges of subjectivity in the digital culture. And yet, it does not go quite far enough, especially as we consider the challenges suggested by Poster’s observation regarding the battleground over human identity in information society and illustrated by Sophie. Verbeek’s framework fails to address several important issues, including the potential impact of digital technologies, the social and cultural context of technological mediation, and the emergence of subjectivity in children. Verbeek argues that rather than reject technology, we must engage our capacity of reflection and moral imagination and ask what kind of mediated subjects we want to be, developing a self-practice that allows us to appropriate technology and modify the ways it shapes our existence. He appropriates Foucault’s model of technologies of the self, revising it from a concern with Greco-Roman sexual passions to our relationship with technology. We might wonder, though, whether a series of practices first developed in the ancient world are translatable into today’s cultural context. To what extent can we talk uniformly about technologies or practices of the self as we navigate the paradigm shift from a print to a digital culture? Foucault’s model pays little attention to media technologies while being firmly situated in a world structured by practices such as diary and letter writing. Much of the work on the impact of technology on subjectivity, however, begins from the standpoint of a shift from a print-based culture to a digital culture. In the shift from diaries and letters to Twitter and Instagram, can Foucault’s practices of the self survive? What are the implications of changes in the modes of communication? These are questions that Verbeek’s framework fails to adequately address. This becomes an especially pertinent question in regard to children raised in a digital culture. Consider in this context Katherine Hayles’ assessment of the impact of digital technologies on attention and reading practices. Hayles argues that we are in the midst of a generational shift in cognitive modes in which the media have played a major role, suggesting that a combination of digital media and brain plasticity may be leading to the creation of new brains and new subjectivity. As she notes, «In media-rich environments, where read  Ibidem, p. 141.   Ibidem, p. 165.

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ing is a minor activity compared to other forms of media consumption, one would expect that the processes of synaptogenesis would differ significantly from those in media constrained environments in which reading is the primary activity»18. Hayles documents a shift from deep reading and attention to what she terms hyper reading and attention, agreeing with Nicholas Carr that distraction is becoming a contemporary cultural condition fostered by digital media practices. «As contemporary environments become more information intensive, it is no surprise that hyper attention (…) is growing and that deep attention (…) is diminishing, particularly among young adults and teens»19. While Hayles is cautious in drawing conclusions from this research, even her cautious conclusions present challenges to Verbeek’s emphasis on developing self-practices if the very technology we are seeking to forge a relationship to potentially undermines the kind of critical deliberation implied in a Foucauldian technological ascesis, which typically implies long and severe self-discipline, something seemingly at odds with a culture of distraction. Having recognized that technology is one of the most important powers that help shape subjectivity, Verbeek’s framework fails to address how digital technology potentially shapes subjectivity in ways that may minimize the power of ascesis. Verbeek’s failure to attend to potential challenges presented by his re-situating ancient ascetic practices in the digital culture is symptomatic of his framework’s emphasis on technological mediation to the exclusion of almost anything else. While endorsing the postphenomenological insight that technologies are always situated in a cultural context, Verbeek’s framework pays little attention to that context. His account of mediation focuses almost exclusively on technological mediation. The relations that co-constitute the human being are largely technological. Technology, Verbeek repeatedly asserts, is the starting point20. It fundamentally mediates the what kind of humans we are21. While such a starting point seems reasonable given our increasingly technological culture, it comes at the expense of the broader cultural forces that shape both human beings and technology and results in too little attention paid to the human beings that are being constituted. While Verbeek maintains technology is one of the sources of mediation, his framework offers little evidence regarding other sources of mediation and the role they might

18   N. K. Hayles, Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes, «Profession», 2007, p. 194. 19   N. K. Hayles, How We Think, Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press, p. 69. 20   Verbeek, Moralizing Technology, p. 73. 21   Ibidem, p. 82.

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play in shaping subjectivity and the kind of self-practices he emphasizes. As philosopher David Kaplan has noted, Verbeek «tends to treat mediation as a personal affair, not a social affair». Verbeek, Kaplan argues, remains relatively uninterested in the historical nature of mediation and «the material conditions that shape and affect the present»22. Sophie’s JSOD focuses our attention on the formation of subjectivity and the cultural context in which that subjectivity is formed. It also asks us to think critically about the other sources of mediation that shape the subject. Gender seems a particularly salient element of that field, especially given Sophie’s efforts to try and make sense of her place in a culture shaped not only by the presence of technology but as well by gendered assumptions about that technology and the individual human beings who interact with it. As Jane Flax has observed of Foucault’s history of sexuality, «This may seem obvious but the centrality of gendering in the constitution of modern Western selves is often completely ignored, even by some of our most influential modern theorists»23. The human beings in Verbeek’s framework are simply human beings – not flesh and blood actual beings with a determinate history, culture, gender, or class. We might worry that a framework predicated on technologies of the self pays too close attention to the self without thinking about how that self is enrolled in larger networks that shape and possibly determine it. This brings us to the third concern with Verbeek’s framework. Verbeek’s account of the techniques of self (much like Foucault’s) begins from the standpoint of the subject shaping his or her (though primarily his) life. Few questions are raised about how the subject got to this point. What are the conditions of possibility of the subject constituting him or herself through techniques of the self? Little attention is paid to the processes that give rise to subjectivity and much is assumed about the shape of that subjectivity. The technologically mediated constitution of the subject, Verbeek suggests, is the starting point for moral self-practices. But we might think that the starting point is in fact the formation of a subjectivity that is capable of such critical reflection, and that surely begins in a different place, leaving us to wonder whether Verbeek’s framework is predicated on a picture of the human being as a reflective adult, responsible and in control of his or herself. Verbeek suggests that Foucault wanted to return to the way in which the subject came into being: the explicit shaping of one’s subjectivity by deliberately «subjecting» oneself to a specific code and specific moral practices. But what

  D. Kaplan, What Things Still Don’t Do, «Human Studies», 32 (2009) 2, p. 238.   J. Flax, Disputed Subjects, London, Routledge, 1993, p. 168.

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enables this kind of work upon oneself and what must the self or subject be such that they are enabled to enter into that kind of work? This question is seldom broached in either Foucault or Verbeek. Verbeek’s account of a technological ascesis, indebted to Foucault’s technologies of the self, fails to address the question of how one becomes the kind of subject able to critically engage with the different forms of mediation made available by technology. One might think that Sophie could decide whether to embrace the disordered aspect of JSOD or revel in her new-found form of subjectivity. But how is she able to critically engage these powers? Her own capacity to reflect critically on her place in a technological culture has to be instilled through long periods of nurturance and education and support, an aspect of subjectivity that neither Foucault nor Verbeek attends to. Verbeek suggests that mediation begins from the standpoint of both designers and users, but he pays minimal attention to those users and how they come to have the critical self-practices that allow them to engage in a technological ascesis. If our digital technologies are having an impact, especially on children, as Hayles suggests, it will be necessary to address the formation of subjectivity in young subjects immersed in the digital culture. 3.  A Final Turn for Philosophy of Technology This essay began with the observation that in addressing subjectivity and the digital culture, we are faced with a challenge, a challenge reflected in the case of Sophie and her ‘disorder’. I have suggested that a philosophy of technological mediation is not yet up to that challenge and its weakness is its very starting point: technology. Taking technology as its starting point, as it does, this framework says very little about the broader cultural forces that shape both human beings and technology and pays too little attention to the human beings that are being constituted. More importantly, in taking technology as its starting point, Verbeek’s framework, like Foucault’s before him, fails to address precisely how we become moral subjects capable of engaging in technological ascesis. This should come as no surprise. As Flax observes, «The denial and repression of early infantile experience has had a deep and largely unexplored impact on philosophy»24. Flax argues that feminist theory to the contrary takes infantile

  J. Flax, Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious, in S. Harding – M. Hintikka (ed. by), Discovering Reality, «Synthese Library», 161 (2003), p. 245. 24

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experience and women’s activity within the domestic realm as the starting point for both theory and practice. Importantly as well, the feminist critique of subjectivity offers a worthwhile parallel to Verbeek’s critique of autonomous subjectivity. Both reject the individualist, rationalist, autonomist model of Cartesian subjectivity still influential in much of philosophy. But to that critique, feminist theorists bring an awareness of how we become persons capable of engaging in the kind of technological ascesis Verbeek endorses. In order to develop an adequate framework for addressing subjectivity in the digital culture, a philosophy of technological mediation must make a further turn toward developing an account of human persons that attends to the emergence of subjectivity in culture as an achievement of the kind of animal that we are. Drawing on several sources, including Flax, Annette Baier, Marjorie Grene, and Mary Midgley, allow me to sketch such an account. On this account, human persons are a part of nature, born premature as vulnerable and dependent animals, who achieve personhood in a world that is deeply social and cultural. We human persons are living, embodied, organic beings, embedded in nature, seeking like all animals to orient ourselves in our environment. Reminding ourselves of our kinship with animals serves to remind us that human beings are characterized by some of the same drives, capacities, and needs of all animals. As Grene observes, «Curiosity, exploration, pride, shame, jealousy all seem to be observable in other animals as well as in ourselves»25. Flax and Midgley, too, emphasize that the human person is characterized by complex and sometimes contradictory drives and motivations, owing to our animal nature. We are animals, then, but as Grene often notes, we are rather odd animals with a peculiar human form of animality dependent on culture. Human beings are odd animals in that in our case our growth and development have been retarded. As Baier observes, we have a relatively long gestational period and a relatively long youth that requires the care and protection of adults. Our premature birth and long period of development before achieving maturity reminds us that we human beings are born needy and dependent. To meet those needs, human beings depend on caregivers to provide affection, support, and interdependence. Flax observes that this long period of development during which we are physically dependent on others is marked by both emotional dependency and our rapidly developing consciousness of social relations. As she emphasizes, feminist theorists stress the central

  M. Grene – N. Eldridge, Interactions, New York, Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 171. 25

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importance of sustained, intimate relations with other persons in the constitution, structure, and ongoing experience of a self26. Baier emphasizes a similar point. Personhood is an achievement requiring successive periods of infancy, childhood and youth, during which they develop as persons. «In virtue of our long and helpless infancy, persons, who all begin as small persons, are necessarily social beings, who first learn from older persons, by play, by imitation, by correction»27. Human persons develop and have a history in which they are recognized and responded to as persons. It is our social nature, the fact of mutual recognition and answerability and our responsiveness to other persons, that shapes and makes possible our personhood. Baier puts this point in terms of our learning the arts of personhood. «The more refined arts of personhood are learned as the personal pronouns are learned, from the men and women, girls and boys, who are the learners’ companions and play-mates. We come to recognize ourselves and others in mirrors, to refer to ourselves and to other». It is in the learning from others that we acquire a sense of our place in a series of persons, to some of whom we have special responsibilities. To be a person is to be a history, as Baier notes: «We acquire a sense of ourselves as occupying a place in an historical and social order of persons, each of whom has a personal history interwoven with the history of a community»28. Beginning from this standpoint, we note important differences from a standpoint that begins with technology and technological mediation. First, emphasis is placed foremost on social relations and dependency. In discussing the «importance of babies», Midgley observes, «we might do well to remember that this is a species whose members, as babies, communicate with other people long before they try to handle inanimate objects»29. Rather than beginning with tools and technology, or even language, Midgley points to the significance of sociality, sympathy, and expressive behavior in the formation of human persons. We are social animals and the natural habitat of persons is with other persons. Secondly, gendering is an integral part of this process of becoming an individual subject. While recognizing that gendering is a heterogeneous and often contradictory experience, Flax points out that it is one of the conditions of possibility of modern subjectivity. «One becomes a

  J. Flax, Thinking Fragments, Berkeley, CA, The University of California Press, 1990, p. 229. 27   A. Baier, A Naturalist View of Persons, «Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association», 65 (1991) 3, p. 13. 28   A. Baier, Postures of Mind, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1985, p. 90. 29   M. Midgley, Science and Poetry, London, Routledge, 2001, p. 90. 26

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boy or a girl, not a person»30. Furthermore, such a view emphasizes our deep immersion in culture of which technology is a part. As Midgley argues, culture is essential to our lives. It is a natural necessity in that it provides a sense of habit, continuity, and pattern to our lives that would be chaotic (possibly not human) without it. Grene notes that as human beings we are destined to become the persons we do become in an artifactual, language-mediated world that includes technology, but also social institutions, art, cosmologies, and myths31. Culture, on this view, is best seen as cultures, recognizing that culture is not a monolith, as Midgley points out, «Western culture is not a single culture at all, but a debating-ground, not a monolith but a fertile confused jungle of sources. Within that jungle we have to choose, and hard work it is (…)»32. Recognizing the complexity of human needs and motivation, as well as the complexity of culture provides us with a ground on which to understand where critique, including the critique of technology, comes from. It is by situating technology and our images of technology in pluralistic cultural contexts that the chance for debate and critique arises. But such critique also implies the notion of constancy and a stable core self. As Grene argues, human persons cope with the complexity of the world by acting out of a center. «To be a person, in the sense in which we human beings consider ourselves persons, is to be the center of actions, in such a way that we are accountable for what we do»33. Being a center of action is in fact important for many life forms and operating under something like an ordering principle is probably essential to our human way of being. It’s certainly essential to the process of raising children and anyone who has observed either human beings or animals laboring under the burden of fragmentation, it is not a comfortable sight. As Jane Flax observes, «Those who celebrate or call for a ‘decentered’ self seem self-deceptively naïve and unaware of the basic cohesion within themselves that makes the fragmentation of experiences something other than a terrifying slide into psychosis»34. All of this suggests that in working towards an adequate framework for the evaluation of human-technology relations, we need to keep in mind that the human being is more than a mere user of technology and exists in relation to more than technology. Technology is not the tissue of meaning within which   Flax, Disputed Subjects, p. 97.   M. Grene, The Understanding of Nature, Dordrecht, D. Reidel, 1974, p. 358. 32   M. Midgley, Beast and Man, New York, Routledge, 1979, p. 210. 33   M. Grene, A Philosophical Testament, Illinois, IL, Open Court, 1995, p. 176. 34   Flax, Thinking Fragments, p. 218. 30 31

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our existence takes shape. Human culture and society is, of which surely technology is a large part, just not the only part and sometimes not even the most fundamental part. We are not first and foremost tool using animals, but social animals shaped and mediated by human community. 4.  Sophie Redux Verbeek’s philosophy of technological mediation aims not at protecting humanity from technology but carefully assessing and experimenting with technological mediations. But what if assessing those mediations is possible only on the basis of protecting humanity from the technology we are experimenting with? And who is this «humanity» who doesn’t need to be protected? Sophie’s therapist observes that for Sophie the boundaries between Synthetic and human have been blurred. Such blurring of boundaries is often celebrated and endorsed as pleasurable in calls for experimenting with subjectivity in the digital culture. They may indeed be pleasurable, even transgressive. And yet much depends on the standpoint of those transgressive experimenters. Beginning not from the standpoint of a mature rational human being but from the challenges presented in domestic situations with children who require care and instruction, might result in a different take on experiments with boundary crossings and technological mediations. Humans and the case of Sophie serves to reorient the discussion of subjectivity in the digital culture in terms of a domestic standpoint in which one’s humanity is not yet fully established and in which protections may be all the more appropriate. Humans reminds us that humanity is an achievement that takes place in the home and can take complex, sometimes discomfiting forms. It directs our attention to the domestic sphere, to the formation of subjectivity, to parents caring for and instructing their children and worrying about their development, concerns that seldom take center stage in philosophy of technology. We need to make philosophy of technology more continuous with our lives as human persons understood fully, from cradle to grave as it were. A fuller understanding of the ethical implications of technology requires a fuller understanding of ourselves as persons for whom our personhood is an achievement. If indeed our natural habitat as persons is among other persons, that’s the point at which we ought to begin thinking about technological mediations. Writing in a different context, Kate Soper suggests that at times we must recognize «a species-specific and exclusive need for us to police divisions (between life and death, children and adults, nourishment

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and excretion, humans and animals) whose maintenance is seen as a condition of the possibility of any human community»35. Flax too suggests that certain forms of life may preclude the possibility of enduring attachments or responsibilities to another in which the other can rely on one’s stability and continuity of being. They might find themselves agreeing with Sophie’s therapist’s advice that the best thing now for Sophie is human contact. «No Synths, just her mum and dad, family and friends». A framework adequate to the assessment of subjectivity in the digital culture cannot ignore the processes in terms of which human persons become the subjects they are. Making this third turn, a turn toward an account of human persons, may not make the task of evaluating subjectivity in the digital culture any easier, but it doesn’t ignore the central fact that in the battle over human identity in the information age, we ought to be cognizant of our most vulnerable and needy subjects and what might be required for the formation of their subjectivity. An ethical technology of the self should not forget what it takes for selves to show up on the scene, and that implies that in thinking about technology we think about infants, children, the domestic sphere and the potential impact of technological mediations on human attachment and caregiving. Dennis Weiss York College of Pennsylvania, US [email protected]

  K. Soper, Unnatural times? The social imaginary and the future of nature, «The Sociological Review», 2010, p. 229. 35

KNOWLEDGE AND AUTONOMY. CHANGES OF PERCEPTION IN A DIGITAL CULTURE

1.  Introduction The digitalization of the life-world, which has increased strongly in recent decades and is progressing daily1, is undoubtedly changing perception, the structures of action, knowledge and work, as well as the practices of communication and self-constitution. These transformations affect the relationship of people to each other, to themselves and their environment, as well as the work and professions, the space and habitation – in brief, the being-in-theworld itself is changing2. The virtual space is ontologically no other space than that of our life-world, which we experience as phenomenon. Although perception, communication and action take place in the mediation via ICT (Information and Communication Technology) under very different conditions and structures, they remain – despite all transformations in the digital sphere – phenomena of an embodied practice of the concretely situated subject. Separating the onlife and the offlife is misleading, so that they «are understood and/or experienced as living in two separate worlds instead of their being viewed as two different ways of being-in-the-world»3. Therefore, digitalization does not only mean a restructuring of our working and living environment, but the increasing use of information and communications

1   According to a study, more than half of the world’s population (more than 4 billion out of 7.6 billion people, or 57%) now use the Internet (as of January 2019), with one million new Internet users added every day. 45% of the world’s population are active in social media (source: https://wearesocial.com/global-digital-report-2019, retrieved June 20, 2019). 2   M. Serres, Erfindet euch neu! Eine Liebeserklärung an die vernetzte Generation, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2013, p. 22. 3   R. Capurro, Digitization as an Ethical Challenge (http://www.capurro.de/businessimpact_engl.html, retrieved June 17, 2019).

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technology has an effect on the subject’s performances and thus also on its self-constitution. Technological changes are ecological, i.e. they change how we deal with the environment and others, and thus our self-image, because the development of a person is intersubjective and always co-developing with its environment. Rafael Capurro, however, is concerned about the development that we interpret ourselves from a digital ontology, i.e. the digital world becomes the model for the real world, which is formed, understood and designed according to its characteristics. We would then believe we can only understand what can be digitized. Such a «digital informatism» bears the risk that we design our being from the digital4. A broad concept of the infosphere does not only understand digital data and analog information as information, but the entire reality5. This understanding converges with the conception of mind and intelligence as a calculation function. Functionalism, connectionism and cogni­ tivism hardly take into account the bodily embeddedness of the mental, just as the idea of mind-upload is widespread in cyberculture. The idea that the human mind could be stored on a hard disk testifies to a misunderstanding of the functioning and conditions of mental capacities and thus favors a «neo-gnostic dualism»6. This is accompanied by the conceptual loss of nuances of the mental, its implicit competencies and its ultimate unavailability. Transparency and availability seem to be the imperatives of a digital culture, they follow from the imperative of the «now»7. These imperatives, however, run counter to the conditions of personality development, because it extends over long periods of time and refers to the past and the future. In addition, the recognition of the unavailability of the person is constitutive for the development of personality, as is the interplay between the implicit and the explicit, the intransparency and transparency in self-design and self-knowledge.

  Ibidem.   L. Floridi, Die 4. Revolution. Wie die Infosphäre unser Leben verändert, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2015, p. 64. 6   Th. Fuchs, Der Schein des Anderen. Empathie und Virtualität, in T. Breyer (ed. by), Grenzen der Empathie. Philosophische, psychologische und anthropologische Perspektiven, Munich, Fink, 2013 (also available on ResearchGate, 2015, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4852.1124), pp. 263-282: 276. 7   «The “now” becomes an imperative or a social value on which the immediate access to information and knowledge is based no less than the present organization of global communication, dislocated from a specific place in which people are physically located. This new kind of moral imperative impels us also to be accessible ourselves all the time and in every place to digital messages» (R. Capurro, Shapes of Freedom in the Digital Age, online at: http://www. capurro.de/kastamonu.html, retrieved May 20, 2019). 4 5

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Exactness, mathematizability, predictability and explicitness of the binary digital world do not correspond with the intermediate, the in-between that is suitable for human existence and the Leib. While, on the one hand, human self-design is influenced by the digital on a theoretical level, the habituation of the practices with which we perceive, communicate and constitute ourselves is directly affected by the digitalization of the world in which we live. Both have an effect on the possibilities of self-determination, i.e. our autonomy. 2.  Changes of Perception and Communication Perception and communication are practices that are exercised in the course of life in confrontation with the environment and others, in which certain patterns and structures are formed. Structures of perception are developed in social contact, whereby certain areas of awareness and habituali­ zed attention movements are sedimented into an attentional sphere8: «Die Bildung eines Habits der Selbstwahrnehmung und Selbstdarstellung geht mit der Sedimentierung von Haltungen einher, die sich von daher als immer schon intersubjektiv konstituierte ausweisen»9. These practices also have an effect on human self-understanding, on the one hand in the sense of self-perception, on the other in the sense of self-constitution through communication with others. The human being «est au monde»10, is to the world – i.e. he designs himself and his actions to and from the world. Developmental psychological studies also show that the ‘I’, the subject, only gains contours through intersubjective interactions and that subjectivity and perspectivity are constituted in these processes. The child experiences itself by making sensomotoric and affective experiences with its environment, whereby it also needs the reflection in and by the other, the resonance, which is constituting, creating and shaping identity11. Physical interactions and expressivity also enable an intersubjective understanding between adults. The body (Leib) is, so to speak, a «Resonanzboden»12 and thus, resonating, the basis of complex forms of empathy. Embodied expressions are very important for

8   Th. Breyer, Verkörperte Intersubjektivität und Empathie. Philosophisch-anthropologische Untersuchungen, Frankfurt a.M., Vittorio Klostermann, 2015, p. 73. 9   Ibidem, p. 55. 10   M. Merleau-Ponty, Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1966, p. 7. 11   See the research of Colwyn Trevarthen, Thiemo Breyer or Martin Altmeyer. 12   Breyer, Verkörperte Intersubjektivität und Empathie, p. 49.

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understanding others, more than cognitivistic theories assume13. Therefore, cognition should always be seen in the bodily and thus sensomotoric as well as interactive context. The concept of the so-called 4E-cognition understands cognition as embodied, extended (to sensorimotor functions and by aids), embedded (in different spatial, temporal, instrumental, cultural, individual and collective contexts) as well as enactive (actively shaping, producing)14. Virtual, disembodied communication, however, lacks the authenticity of the mutual resonance and the Interaffectivity, i.e. the direct and bodily feedback of emotional expressions and gestures15. Thus, like Fuchs concludes, the other easily becomes a projection surface, a product and even the object of my arbitrariness, while the subtle graduations of closeness and distance are leveled, as well as the nuances of social interaction are often omitted16. According to the intersubjectivity of self-constitution, it can be assumed that a diminished differentiation in communication will extend to the self-understanding, -perception and -reflection. Humans develop ontogenetically a repertoire of experiences and behaviour from birth or even prenatally. Emotional attitudes and evaluation patterns are acquired in direct contact with family, friends and the immediate environment17. These evaluation patterns enable orientation and structure what is evaluated as important or unimportant, pleasant or unpleasant. In ICT-mediated actions the immediate bodily experience is weaker, so that the disconnection is levelling the difference between appearance and reality18. Comments in social media are often faceless and contextless. We don’t know from whom a comment comes and which motives and intentions were guiding her or him, which horizon of experiences formed her opinion or whether a remark is meant ironically or mockingly. This makes it difficult to decide what weight should be attached to a comment or how it should be classified. This deficit of semantics can only be compensated for by the addressee himself. Communication via social media is thus suitable for a constructivistic moment (when those communicating do not know each other), which affirms existing patterns of experience and understanding. But in order to confirm or refute our ideas, the active contact with the world and the concrete encounter with

  Ibidem, p. 61.   Ibidem, pp. 30-34. 15   Fuchs, Der Schein des Anderen, p. 277. 16   Ibidem. 17   See the hypothesis of «somatic markers» in A. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York, Putnam, 1994. 18   Fuchs, Der Schein des Anderen, p. 274. 13 14

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others is required, which changes our perspective and works as correctives for our ideas and illusions19. On the other hand discussions on social media can show the participants other perspectives and correct some illusions. The higher resonance and participation, the possibility to open up a virtual Agora also intensify discussions, reflections and allow for sophisticated argumentation. Nonetheless, social and interpretive skills are required here, and the willingness to understand and argue in a constructive way – an attitude that we are more likely to adopt in face-to-face communication. At the level of primary empathy20, bodily communication is not unrefracted – a subtle oscillation between resonances and dissonances advance the process of interaction21. One thus experiences a certain resistance of the other, which partially withdraws from me, at least never completely can be grasped. In the virtual world of cyberspace, however, the visuomotoric coupling of user and computer is so optimized that the experiences of robustness, resistance and otherness, which are otherwise characteristic for the physical confrontation with the world, are undermined22. Reality seems to fade away, when phenomena flow smooth and frictionless into the sense and thus circumvent the attentive and critical perception23. On the other hand, communication can become more fragile and broken due to the lack of subtle interaffective oscillation. The bodily abilities of perception and communication have epistemic and orientational functions as well as ethical24 and critical functions, which can be applied less and thus also can be developed less in virtual communication. If the focus shifts from physical to virtual communication, as can be observed in particular with many young people, then it is to be reckoned with that the expectation of frictionlessness and affirmation is transferred to communication behavior as a whole, maybe combined with a lower sense for the oscillation between resonance and dissonance.

  Ibidem, pp. 278-279.   Thomas Fuchs distinguishes between three levels of empathy: a primary empathy that is implicit and bodily, an extended empathy that is explicit and imaginative and allows perspective assumptions, and a fictional empathy for fictitious persons or objects and robots (cf. ibidem, pp. 266-274). 21   Ibidem, p. 273. 22   Ibidem, p. 276. 23   Ibidem, p. 279. 24   «Der ethische Anspruch, der von [dem Anderen] ausgeht, ist letztlich an seine leibliche Gegenwart gebunden» (ibidem). 19

20

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3.  Subjectivity and the Self Perception and communication are practices of the self-constitution of the subject. The subject is not a substance, but possesses a processual identity. This identity is constituted by the different relationships one has to others and to one’s environment, from which different relationships to oneself emerge25. Thus, in the sense of co-development, all the relationships one maintains with one’s environment and others are, in principle, practices of self-shaping and subjectivation at the same time. They encompass narrative, visual and bodily practices, in which the self-image and the way one deals with oneself (self-care) are mutually constituted: «The care for self is of course knowledge of self – that is the Socratic-Platonic aspect – but it is also the knowledge of a certain number of rules of conduct or of principles which are at the same time truths and regulations»26. Self-care as a «practice of the self»27 was of great importance especially in Greek and Roman culture. In the first two centuries of the imperial period «the development of what might be called a ‹cultivation of the self›, wherein the relations of oneself to oneself were intensified and valorized»28 reached its peak. But the preoccupation with oneself, the «epimeleia heautou» or «cura sui»29 was a commandment both with the Platonists and Epicureans and with Zenon, Seneca and Aurel. The epimeleia heautou «is an attitude towards the self, others, and the world», it is a form of attention and mindfulness, as well as it «designates a number of actions exercised on the self by the self, actions by which one takes responsibility for oneself and by which one changes, purifies, transforms, and transfigures oneself»30. This also includes self-observation and self-treatment, from which result «practices of subjectivity» or subjectivation, e.g. «techniques of meditation, of memorization of the past, of examination of conscience»31.

25   M. Foucault, The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom, Interview with Michel Foucault on January 20, 1984, conducted by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Helmut Becker, Alfredo Gomez-Müller, p. 121. Available at: https://journals-sagepub-com.wwwdb.dbod.de/ doi/pdf/10.1177/019145378701200202 (retrieved July 26, 2019). 26   Ibidem, p. 116. 27   Ibidem, p. 113. 28   M. Foucault, The Care of the Self, in Id., The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3, New York, Pantheon Books, 1986, p. 43. 29   Ibidem, p. 45. 30   M. Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-82, ed. by F. Gros, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 11. 31   Ibidem.

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The social practice of self-care as an attitude and way of life included body care, physical exercises, moderate satisfaction of needs, notes or correspondence: «Around the care of the self, there developed an entire activity of speaking and writing in which the work of oneself on oneself and communication with others were linked together»32. The aim of these self-practices was to regulate relationships of power in such a way that no state of domination arises, because in antiquity «not to be a slave (of another city, of those who surround you, of those who govern you, of one’s own passions) was an absolutely fundamental theme»33. They are thus at the same time «practices of freedom»34. This practices also include the question of one’s own dependencies and independence, of social relations and sovereignty. So, the concept of self-care, which Foucault points out in Greek and Roman culture, can be used to analyze our practices of freedom nowadays, because it provides a frame, in which not only self-knowledge, but also self-constituting practices are emphasized. It considers the connection between actions, communication and self-constitution by taking into account the social and embodied beingto-the-world of human beings. How does the increase in communication via social media influence the practices of subjectivation, freedom and self-care? Narrative and visual self-­ representation in social media is part of communication with others and ourselves about ourselves, thus part of identity-constituting processes. The digital mode of this communication allows for a greater deviation from factuality and is therefore advantageous in two ways: it frees us from identity assignments by the immediate environment and allows for a greater experimental scope for testing and expanding our self. To criticize a non-­authenticity would on the one hand imply an essence of the human being and on the other hand implicitly reintroduce a dualism of the analog and digital world. The virtual self-understanding can, under the condition of a reconnection in the ‘analogue’ world, contribute to attaining authenticity (in the sense of processuality, not essentiality), for example through communication about one’s own sexuality, if the immediate environment prescribes a heteronormativity and denies acceptance to other ways of life and love. But then, reconnection to the life-world also means using this co-developed understanding to ultimately gain this authenticity in the immediate environment, i.e. to carry out our chosen ways of living.

 Foucault, The Care of the Self, p. 51.  Foucault, The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom, p. 116. 34   Ibidem, p. 114. 32 33

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A digital culture opens up an enormous potential to make these possibilities of self-development, of participation in social processes accessible – under the prerequisite of the corresponding social structures and the «Umgangskompetenzen»35 (handling competencies). The digital space, however, has certain structures and mechanisms that influence the forms of communication. The imperative of the Now, permanent presence and activity36 inherent in social media, threatens to distort communication and thus self-­understanding and self-constitution. Since communication no longer encounters a bodily-­ affective resistance, which would urge us to cooperation, co-affectation and mutual understanding, on the one hand relationships are easily established, on the other hand it is easier to behave in a destructive way, due to anonymity and the low inhibition threshold without direct contact. A communication practice mainly mediated by social media thus rather causes isolation (because the easily established relationships are based on the other becoming a projection screen) or irritation (difficulty in embedding comments). As an extension and supplement to communication with friends and acquaintances whom one has got to know in direct contact, these problems exist less, since the communication is based on a life-worldly foundation and reconnection. The experience of lower resistance in virtual space (which encourages the use of online media for escaping reality and avoiding conflict) also suggests a lower degree of outcome and consequences of the actions, especially since one does not experience the direct effect on the other person. The behavior of the digital self, e.g. in self-representation or by posting aggressive comments, has repercussions on the behavior of the entire self. Even if the virtual actions can take on an outlet function, it must be emphasized in the sense of cura sui that the outlet must also be shaped, designed and selected. Otherwise it loses its reduction effect and intensifies aggressive emotions. If the digital profile and self-image develops a ‘hegemonic claim’, i.e. becomes the primacy of self-understanding from which one’s own personality and the world in which one lives are viewed, then the conditionality has reversed. What is problematic is not the difference between the real and the digital self, but if the connection is ignored and the physical self of life is neglected and the direct social environment is faded out. An unreflected and too frequent use of digital media impairs not least the physical and cognitive development of children.   Cf. B. Irrgang, Gehirn und leiblicher Geist. Phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Philosophie des Geistes, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. Bernhard Irrgang develops a differentiated model of competencies, based on embodiment, subjectivity and perspectivity. 36   Social networks would follow an ethical imperative: «Communicate all the time everything to everybody!» (Capurro, Digitization as an Ethical Challenge). 35

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Increasing online addiction is particularly prevalent among young people. Correlations with concentration disorders, obesity, dysfunctional stress management, speech development disorders and aggressiveness were observed37. 4.  Knowledge and Autonomy Autonomy, according to the wording, means self-legislation (from the Greek word nomos which means ‘law’). It does not therefore presuppose unconditional freedom, but a voluntary commitment to something. Knowledge is a condition for this voluntary commitment, thus for autonomy. According to Aristotle, an action is to be called a voluntary one if, on the one hand, it is performed unconstrained and, on the other hand, it is accompanied by knowledge of the circumstances of the action, which include one’s own motives, goals and intentions as well as the consequences and possible side effects38. As explained in the previous section, self-knowledge is a constitutive component of successful self-care. Moral action depends on knowledge: «One could not form oneself as an ethical subject in the use of pleasures without forming oneself at the same time as a subject of knowledge»39. Perception or self-perception and knowledge also condition and reinforce each other – in this way, knowledge can be generated from the perceived, but knowledge can also structure perception and enable to see the perceived in a more differentiated way and place it in a spatial, temporal and semantic context. However, individual data and quantitative information, which can be collected, stored, processed and visualized by digitalization, are not yet knowledge in the true sense of the word and do not contain any instructions for action. Knowledge is bound to persons40 and therefore an ability to interpret and contextualize, to evaluate and reflect information.

37   According to: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/5_ Publikationen/Praevention/Berichte/Abschlussbericht_BLIKK_Medien.pdf, retrieved June 27, 2019. 38   «An involuntary action being one done under compulsion or through ignorance, a voluntary act would seem to be an act of which the origin lies in the agent, who knows the particular circumstances in which he is acting» (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Loeb Classical Library 73, p. 127; https://www-loebclassics-com.wwwdb.dbod.de/view/aristotle-nicomachean_ethics/1926/pb_LCL073.127.xml, retrieved July 26, 2019 [DOI: 10.4159/ DLCL.aristotle-nicomachean_ethics.1926]). 39   M. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, in Id., The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, New York, Vintage Books, 1990, p. 86. 40   See M. Polanyi, Implizites Wissen, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985.

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Thus the handling of memories and their visualization is also part of our culture, which will change with digital storage and raise new questions. We cannot preserve the past as such, but it is constantly reintegrated into the present by invoking the data of the past (visual, auditory, factual). The possession of the data itself does not yet make it possible to deal with the past in a sovereign way; this requires a culture of visualization and realization. A large amount of data about the human being and his environment naturally expands the possibilities of self-reflection and the recognition of one’s own conditional structures. In addition, dynamic and self-determined learning is required, which can unleash creative potential. In connection with the above-mentioned neo-gnostic dualism of transhumanists, who see the essence of the human being in quantifiable data, consider the self to be digitizable and thus reduce it, there is, however, the danger of an availability ideology – of oneself and others. Such a conception of freedom seems to understand corporeality (Leiblichkeit) and intersubjectivity as limitations of self-realization and thus threatens to turn into an unreflected, structural dependence and determinacy (for example by technical and algorithmic specifications). However, the transparency of one’s own and of the other is not only an illusion, but also a disregard: to recognize the non-availability of the other means to recognize the other as a person, as a human being. The subject cannot be completely explicated and objectified. The recognition of potential competencies is constitutive for their development41. Knowledge and transparency are correlated with freedom insofar as they empower people to act. It does not, however, follow from this that the transparency of personal data for others means a lack of freedom for me, just as the lack of transparency of myself for others is not simply correlated with more freedom for me. It is more about making the framework, the texture of transparency and non-transparency transparent. In this way the consolidation of states of domination can be avoided, which, according to Foucault, are to be distinguished from relationships of power42. It therefore makes sense to place the concepts of freedom and autonomy on different levels. The conditions for human freedom are, in a basic sense, freedom from obstacles and coercions as well as a scope of possibilities43. But it must be considered contextually what is hold as an obstacle and what is taken for an enabling condition, as well as the possibilities should be evalu-

 Breyer, Verkörperte Intersubjektivität und Empathie, p. 91.   Foucault, The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom, p. 114. 43   G. Seebass, Handlung und Freiheit, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2006. 41 42

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ated qualitatively and the decision-making competence of the human being has to be taken into account. Technologies can empower a community and promote emancipation, thus disempowering governance structures. But it can also disempower people from socially weak milieus and empower global corporations. In this context, freedom can be described as possibility and ability to develop different perspectives and structures of meaning in dealing with the environment and other people and to let these become effective in action44. It is therefore always relational and ecological, i.e. realized in the relationship between individuals and their environment. The linguistic and technical culture conditions and expands these abilities (by differentiating, preserving and integrating meanings and by expanding the scope for action), whereby the social nature of man is constitutive for their development. Freedom thus also implies a relationship and a reflective distance to oneself and the environment, whereby a handling and transformation competence with structures and meanings must be developed. Technology, language and culture expand our scope of possibilities, but they also create new dependencies. Freedom must therefore be analyzed contextually and situatively and understood as empowerment within relationships of powers, whereby the structure of empowerment, commitment and determination shifts according to the chosen point of view. The concept of autonomy, on the other hand, refers to the practice of shaping one’s life and power relations, in which various values are incorporated and which includes a reflection on oneself and one’s way of life. It can be understood as a metastructure about power structures that regulates the structure of freedom and commitment and normatively aligns the application of our freedom, i.e. our transformation competencies. More knowledge or the possibility of knowing (and thus also freedom and empowerment) goes hand in hand with a greater responsibility and also an obligation to inform oneself. When Capurro writes: «Human freedom means the freedom to conceal or reveal who we are. An imperative of total un-concealment is no less un-human that another of total concealment»45, we can specify: Freedom (as an analytical, descriptive category) is the possibility to reveal and conceal who we are, while autonomy (as a category of normative practice) means the reflected decision about and practice of structuring the un-/concealment.

  G. Northoff, Freiheit und Einbettung in die Umwelt – ein relationales neurophilosophisches Modell, in J.-Ch. Heilinger (ed. by), Naturgeschichte der Freiheit, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 307-334. 45  Capurro, Digitization as an Ethical Challenge. 44

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For gaining autonomy, negotiating the limits of transparency and related normative values (such as justice, equality, prosperity, health) is one of the most pressing issues of our society today. 5.  Conclusion The digitalization of our living environment is a challenge because without appropriate embedding it intensifies the conflicts and problems of the lifeworld itself and exacerbates social inequality. By providing a huge amount of data, models and tools for detecting correlations and patterns, by enabling participation and accelerating processes of communication and exchange, digitalization is very helpful to solve many problems, but only in conjunction with changes in social and economic conditions in the societies concerned. To solve the educational problem in developing countries through access to the Internet alone is a technocratic approach that obscures people’s real needs and the shortcomings of social and economic structures46. It is precisely a lack of education that makes it difficult to exploit the positive potential of digital information, learning opportunities and social media. Since the world in which we live is not simply being expanded by digital space, but is changing overall, it is important to understand and shape the effects of these changes. The respective structures of empowerment and disempowerment must be analyzed and balanced accordingly in order to deconstruct states of domination. In the age of a largely digitally mediated being-to-the-world, a digital enlightenment47 is needed, which is not only consisting of the development of media competence. Other skills of self-care should be regarded by taking into account the embodiment of cognitive skills and the several conditions for the development and constitution of the self. A digital enlightenment can only be achieved by working at several levels. On the one hand, life-world structures should be designed in such a way that the potential of digital information, communication and learning opportunities can be profitably exploited. This means strengthening social and autodidactic skills, skills of orientation, evaluation and communication as well as enhancing critical, perspective thinking. This also includes the   Laura Cabrera examines the various enhancement approaches in the biomedical, trans­ humanist and social paradigm and finds that social enhancement is «a more inclusive, equitable, sustainable way» (L. Y. Cabrera, Rethinking Human Enhancement. Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 86). 47   Capurro, Digitization as an Ethical Challenge. 46

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improvement of social and pedagogical structures. In order for technology to enable qualitative differentiation without leading to disorientation and arbitrariness, and for it to be a tool of self-reflection and enhancement, it must be embedded in a concept of self-reflection and enhancement that is not derived from technology itself. On the other hand, the design of technologies, in particular by a few global corporations, using intransparent algorithms and economizing the communication for the purpose of data sales, should be supplemented by the promotion of alternative, decentralized providers with open usage and configuration structures, whereby the usage constraints imposed on the user by e.g. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple etc. must be defused so that a transformation of the determining factors and the development of alternative action structures are easier. Technologies can be analyzed under the aspects for whom they open or close which possibilities of action, knowledge and self-care, which dependencies, power structures and states of domination they constitute or fortify, and to what extent they are reversible. Furthermore, the conceptualization of human from the digital point of view should not be underestimated. It is not only about the ideas of some science-fiction-visionaries, but also about research concepts that are implemented in technology development. How we design ourselves has an impact on the way we shape our world, on the practices of self-care and freedom. If we want to speak of a digital culture and autonomy, we need to shape and channel the changes through ICT and to design the integration of virtual actions into analogue structures of action. The point of view from which the self and living world are constituted and shaped does not lie in another digital world. Such a digital ontology would not be an empowerment in a pure data sphere, in which the sluggish, aging and ailing body has been stripped off, but it would deprive ourselves of creative, empathetic, critical, social and moral abilities which are bound to the embodiment of cognition, perception and communication. Constanze Fanger TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

DIGITAL SUBJECTIVITY: FROM A NETWORK METAPHOR TO A LAYER-PLATEAU MODEL

1.  Subject-Object For centuries subjectivity has been conceived as that which is in strict opposition to objectivity. Subject and object formed a perfect dichotomy, where the former stood for all that was active, thinking, willing, feeling, performing, and the latter was passive, obedient and subordinated to the free will and actions of the subject1. This modern paradigm has been challenged and deconstructed. If deconstruction is understood as the shaking of the foundations of a given theory, then Bruno Latour’s early book We Have Never Been Modern2 is one of the best examples of deconstruction that unleashes a critique against the subject-object dichotomy. Latour names the process of differentiating between subjects and objects «purification». It is, he argues, a major process of modernity. It is the process that «creates two entirely distinct ontological zones: that of human beings on the one hand; that of non-humans on the other»3. The purification occurs in parallel and together with another process that Latour terms «translation» or mediation. It is the opposite act of creating hybrids of humans and non-humans. The moderns, according to Latour, maintain the two processes analytically separate, although in practice they are inter-related and inter-dependent. Purification is futile because «the more we 1   There were, of course, liminal cases such as animals. Modern thinkers categorized them as objects, and then proceeded to explain that animals have no emotions (except for pain), they cannot think, or in the words of Martin Heidegger, they are «poor in the world» (see G. Wellner, Do Animals Have Technologies?, «Studia Phaenomenologica», 17 [2017], pp. 265-282). 2   B. Latour, We have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993. 3   Ibidem, pp. 10-11.

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forbid ourselves to conceive of hybrids, the more possible their interbreeding becomes – such is the paradox of the moderns»4. Latour argues that this modern system has become untenable towards the end of the twentieth century. The problem is that «the moderns have been victims of their own success»5. He elaborates: When the only thing at stake was the emergence of a few vacuum pumps, they could still be subsumed under two classes, that of natural laws [i.e. objects] and that of political representations [i.e. subjects]; but when we find ourselves invaded by frozen embryos, expert systems, digital machines, sensor equipped robots, hybrid corn, data banks, psychotropic drugs, whales outfitted with radar sounding devices, gene synthesizers, audience analyzers, and so on, when our daily newspapers display all these monsters on page after page, and when none of these chimera can be properly on the object side or on the subject side, or even in between, something has to be done6.

Once this flood of “monsters” begins, we can no longer keep the subject-object dichotomy. According to Latour, «(…) if we link together in one single picture the work of purification and the work of mediation that gives it meaning, we discover, retrospectively, that we have never been truly modern»7. A meticulous and devoted exercise of purification leads to the dissolution of modernity as an organizing principle of society. 2.  The Network Metaphor Latour suggests solving the modern paradox by replacing the subject-object dichotomy with the new concept of “actor-network”. The theory is named after this concept, Actor-Network Theory, known for its acronym ANT. Latour explains: «the acronym A.N.T. was perfectly fit for a blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveler. An ant writing for other ants, this fits my project very well!»8. Hence, «ANT prefers to travel slowly, on small roads, on foot, and by paying the full cost of any displacement out

  Ibidem, p. 12.   Ibidem, p. 49. 6   Ibidem, pp. 49-50. 7   Ibidem, p. 91. 8   B. Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 9. 4 5

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of its own pocket»9. Moreover, «the ANT-scholar has to trudge like an ant, carrying the heavy gear in order to generate even the tiniest connection»10. What is the “network” in ANT? In 200511, he writes: «network is an expression to check how much energy, movement, and speci­ficity our own reports are able to capture. Network is a concept, not a thing out there. It is a tool to help describe something, not what is being described»12. In short, the network for Latour is a model or a metaphor. It is a confusing metaphor because it serves to describe also technical networks like subways and telephones. Latour recognizes that «When this term was introduced twenty-five years ago, the Internet had not struck»13. Now, Latour admits, «It has lost its sharp edge»14. Yet, he continues using the word “network” because Whatever the word, we need something to designate flows of translations. Why not use the word network, since it is now there and solidly attached by a little hyphen to the word actor (…)? There exists no good word anyway, only sensible usage; in addition, the original material metaphor still retains the three important features I wish to induce with this expression: a) a point-to-point connection is being established (…); b) such a connection leaves empty most of what is not connected (…); c) this connection is not made for free, it requires effort (…)15.

The network has become the major metaphor for ANT and remains in use until today, in spite of some misleading connotations. Viewed historically, ANT’s network metaphor is well-rooted in late twentieth century. This metaphor can be understood as part of a legacy of technology-based metaphors explaining our relations with the surrounding environment. In the early middle ages, the book was the latest technology, replacing the scrolls thereby enabling immediate access to a specific passage. No need to role and search, the reader could open the book exactly in the place where he (it was only rarely a she) found interest. Anything complicated or difficult to understand became equated with a book – life, nature

  Ibidem, p. 23.   Ibidem, p. 25. 11   At this point Latour’s late writing is not in line with the early one, as he admits in ibidem, p. 9, fn. 9. 12   Ibidem, p. 131. 13   Ibidem. 14   Ibidem, p. 132. 15   Ibidem. 9

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etc. Then came the clock. A mechanical apparatus that looked very complicated to the average medieval person, and a good analogy for the complexity of nature, including human beings. God is the clock maker in this fable, functioning as an external authority that knows everything and that instructs the believers to move in the right circles. A leapfrog of several hundreds of years puts us in the second half of the twentieth century. With the invention of the computer, many complex phenomena such as the brain, the universe etc. were conceived to match this new exciting technology. And similarly to the clock, most people do not have a clue how it works. Towards the end of the century, with the emergence of the Internet, the metaphor of the computer is expanded to include this virtual network of information. On this background, Latour’s writings on the network become contextualized to a certain era, that is the end of the twentieth century. Latour himself admits it already in We Have Never Been Modern: Fortunately, the assimilation is made easier (…) also by (…) the technological transformations that it authorizes without including them. The itinerary of facts becomes as easy to follow as that of railways or telephones, thanks to the materialization of the spirit that thinking machines and computers allow. When information is measured in bytes and bauds, when one subscribes to a data bank, when one can plug into (or unplug from) a network of distributed intelligence, it is harder to go on picturing universal thought as a spirit hovering over the waters16.

It is not a coincidence that Latour chose the network as his leading metaphor. It helps the readers conceptualize how the model works and make it look familiar. The network metaphor succeeds because it can be imagined quite easily in the technological landscape of late modernity. 3.  The Rhizome Interestingly, Latour’s notion of the network resembles Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notion of the rhizome. I believe Latour was inspired by the rhizome as he originally published We Have Never Been Modern in 1991 (in French, translation to English in 1993) whereas Deleuze and Guattari published Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia in the year 1980 (in French, translated to English in 1987). A relatively early suggestion to name ANT as “actant-rhizome ontology” was rejected by Latour not for being inac Latour, We have Never Been Modern, p. 119.

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curate but for being «a horrible mouthful of words»17. Hence, the difference in terminology is for Latour just a question of style and not a fundamental issue. But there are differences, and they may lead to different emphases. In We Have Never Been Modern, Latour addresses the social sciences, mainly anthropology and sociology, and so he focuses his discussion on the duo of nature and society. Only occasionally does he refer to subjects and objects, with an inclination towards objects: he speaks of quasi-objects18, but hardly mentions quasi-subjects. ANT investigates humans’ relations with nature, technologies, institutions and other humans. Humans are important nodes in the network. Deleuze and Guattari’s backgrounds are in philosophy and psychiatry, and that leads them to focus on the human as such. Deleuze and Guattari reject terms like subject and individual. The human for them is not one single unified entity: no longer in-dividual in the literal sense but rather a dividual, a unit that can decompose. Probably this new sense of identity leads them to describe themselves in the first sentence on Thousand Plateaus as follows: «The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd (…). Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit»19. For Deleuze and Guattari (as well as for Latour after them), the model should be based on the hybridity of humans and the things around them, may they be physical artifacts or abstract notions. This hybridity requires a new understanding of the human, shifting from an individual to a dividual that can re-compose with technologies and other dividuals. This composition is modeled by the rhizome. Deleuze and Guattari devote the first chapter of Thousand Plateaus to the description of the rhizome and this is the key metaphor of the book. Literally, a rhizome is a «subterranean stem»20, a biological term that represents a form of grass21. If you ever tried to uproot a lawn, you probably discovered that the grass has multiple connections to multiple roots. Uprooting one does not help much. «Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any point»22. The rhizome represents a non-hierarchical structure in which   B. Latour, On Recalling ANT, in J. Law – J. Hassard, Actor Network Theory and After, Oxford and Malden, Blackwell Publishing, 1999, pp. 15-25: 19. 18   Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, pp. 51, 59. 19   G. Deleuze – F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi, Minneapolis, MN, and London, University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 3. 20   Ibidem, p. 6. 21   See L. Friedman, Thousand Plateaus: An Anti Nietzscheian Act, «Theory and Criticism», 19 (2001), pp. 231-239. 22   Deleuze – Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 21. 17

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«any point (…) can be connected to anything other, and must be»23. And it moves in all directions, «it spreads like a patch of oil»24. There is no point to ask where a rhizome starts because «A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo»25. This does not mean that a rhizome is a fixed or pre-given entity: «A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed»26. Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate how a rhizome functions with the aid of the wasp and the orchid illustration: Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp (…). At the same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp. (…) There is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of flight composed by a common rhizome (…)27.

The relationships between the wasp and the orchid can be represented as a Latourian hybrid network but this will hardly explain how they influence each other. The rhizome conceptualizes not only a link between two entities but also their inter-dependencies, what Science and Technology Studies (STS) and postphenomenology term co-shaping, co-construction or co-constitution28. A similar interdependency can be found in the relations between humans and their technologies, like cellphones29. These relations follow the guidelines of the rhizome as reflected in the orchid and the wasp example. We are co-shaped by our cellphones as we need them to remember events, places we visited, and people’s names and contact information. At the same time   Ibidem, p. 7.   Ibidem. 25   Ibidem, p. 25. 26   Ibidem, p. 9. 27   Ibidem, p. 10. 28   See N. Oudshoorn – T. Pinch, How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technology, Cambridge, MA, and London, The MIT Press, 2003; P-P Verbeek, What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency and Design, University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005; cf. D. Smith, Rewriting the constitution: A critique of ‘Postphenomenology’, «Philosophy & Technology», 28 (2015) 4, pp. 533-551. 29   See G. Wellner, A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Genealogies, Meanings, and Becoming, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2016. 23 24

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cellphones become “like us” linking pictures to names and email addresses, relating places to time slots in our calendar etc. They help us to communicate with others and remind us of events, contact information and routes, and we take care of them by charging their batteries and decorating them with stickers and accessories. Deleuze and Guattari juxtapose the notion of the rhizome against the popular metaphor of the tree. The tree metaphor is very common in contemporary culture and lies at the foundation of organizational charts, explanations of evolution, assembly instructions, etc. The tree and the rhizome operate according to different logics: «The tree articulates and hierarchizes tracings; tracings are like the leaves of a tree. The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing»30. The rhizome functions like a geographical map that can expand to the north, south, east and west. They both stretch to all directions. The map ends where the physical medium on which it is written ends. Likewise, the rhizome has no clear borders. Back to the example of cellphone, the possible uses are endless, and the device can be used as a phone, a music listening system, navigational assistant, pedometer to count steps, a restaurant guide, flight ordering machine and more. Another similarity between the map and the rhizome is their layered structure. A map is composed of several layers. The most common layers are the outline of the Earth (such as coastlines and mountains), human-built settlements and roads. On top of it one can add layers containing economic data, average temperatures or any other information. The layers of the rhizome are termed by Deleuze and Guattari “plateaus” which further complicate this picture. In the next section I will dive into the concept of plateaus. 4.  Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari explore the structure of the rhizome through the concept of plateaus. Simply put, «A rhizome is made of plateaus»31. They attribute the origin of the term “plateau” to Gregory Bateson who designated the word to «a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end»32. Each plateau is independent yet does not aim at necessarily fulfilling a certain task. A nice illustration to the ways in which plateaus appear in real   Deleuze – Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 12.   Ibidem, p. 22. 32   Ibidem, pp. 21-22. 30 31

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life is the self-description of Deleuze and Guattari on how they wrote their book Thousand Plateaus: Each morning we would wake up, and each of us would ask himself what plateau he was going to tackle, writing five lines here, ten there. We had hallucinatory experiences, we watched lines leave one plateau and proceed to another like columns of tiny ants. We made circles of convergence. Each plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateau33.

In their work it becomes clear that a plateau is not a chapter. It is more like an idea that runs across the whole book. This form of creative writing progresses in several directions simultaneously and rejects the traditional linear-hierarchical movement. The result is a rhizomatic book that should not be read “from cover to cover”. Before the first chapter, Deleuze and Guattari added a short “Authors’ Note” in which they instruct the reader as follows: «[This book] is composed not of chapters but of ‘plateaus’. (…) To a certain extent, these plateaus may be read independently of one another, except the conclusion, which should be read at the end»34. Unlike the layers of the map that each covers a certain aspect (settlements, weather, economic activity etc.), the plateaus are interrelated as they intersect each other. Moreover, while the layers of the map should be aligned to the geographic locations, the plateaus have a much greater freedom, yet they have more intersection points than the geospatial layers. Deleuze and Guattari good-humoredly note: «never is a plateau separable from the cows that populate it, which are also the clouds in the sky»35. On the other hand, layers and plateaus resemble in their tendency to accumulate thereby producing new meanings. To conclude, a plateau is like a thread that traverses throughout a rug, albeit it can stop anywhere and continue elsewhere. By contrast, a layer has a consistency and boundaries, at least for the upper and lower levels. The best example of layers is geological sedimentation that can extend like a map in two dimensions, but each layer is limited by the layers before and after it. The two structures of plateaus and layers can conceptualize humans and technologies. Plateaus are a human characteristic for their immense flexibility whereas layers are on the technological side, with predefined borders, inputs

  Ibidem, p. 22.   Ibidem, p. xx. 35   Ibidem, p. 23. 33 34

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and interfaces. The layers and the plateaus co-shape and complement each other in an endless loop. 5.  The Layers-Plateaus Paradigm So far I have made a distinction between layers and plateaus. My claim is that in the digital age, with the massive proliferation of technologies into almost every aspect of our lives, subjectivity should be modeled according to the combined logic of layers and plateaus. This model allows mixing functionalities between “the human” and “the technological”. It is difficult to notice the layer-plateau structure because we are in a transition period. The world around us moves from “network” to “layers-plateaus” paradigm. This shift restructures the co-shaping processes between humans, technologies and the world. I will demonstrate my claim with three examples involving digital technologies: storing memories on the cellphone, moving around with augmented reality (AR) applications, and imagining with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. The structure of plateaus-layers appears not only in each of these examples but also in the rhizomatic ways in which they interact with each other. Memories form a mix of plateaus and layers. My memory is partially biological – probably residing in the synaptic links between the neurons of my brain, and partially technological – residing in my cellphone’s photo repository, contact list, and calendar, to name a few36. The plateaus intersect each other and the layers endlessly. The difference between plateaus and layers is that technological layers are kept distinct, more or less, most of the time. For instance, photos are not linked to contacts’ information unless an app to associate between them is downloaded and installed on the device. The human memory does not need a special app in order to link between memories, biological and technological alike. The human memory is a rhizomatic composition of plateaus and layers. My second example is AR technologies. Basically they operate by layering information on top of a basic layer, which is often a representation of the real world. The layers’ information can be fictive (like Pokémons in the game-app Pokémon Go) or real (like product’s prices, food’s nutritional values or people’s names). The layers can come in any order, and they lack any hierarchy37.   See Wellner, A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones.   See L. Manovich, The Poetics of Augmented Space, «Visual Communications», 5 (2006) 2, pp. 219-240; Wellner, A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones. 36 37

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Think of a navigation app that shows your location on a map by putting a symbol on it representing your car. This is the basic layer, the so called “reality”. On top of it, the app shows a route to your destination. It also calculates your estimated time of arrival. A third layer may include traffic jams on the way. And a fourth layer displays advertisements of businesses along the route. All the layers are interrelated for coherency, so that traffic jams affect the route. We hope that the algorithm does not recommend a route according to the advertisements, but due to the current market structure we cannot know how the route is calculated and what are all the considerations taken into account. Anyway, as long as the driver obeys the app, the layers function together properly. If the driver makes a turn different from the recommended one, the other layers are disrupted. In terms of plateaus-layers, once a plateau intervenes with the technological layers, the layers re-arrange. You may hear a blip and see a blink as the app recalculates the layers to match the new route. The rhizome of driver-app-traffic is dynamically changing. The last example is AI algorithms of the type known as neural networking that are inspired by the brain’s neuronal structures38. These algorithms are composed of layers of processes, where each layer deals with a fragment of the total task. Take for instance image recognition: one layer identifies lines and edges so that the next layer can detect a figure. A third layer identifies the major colors of the image. Similar processes occur in the human brain to recognize an image. The difference is that the identification of the image requires some form of imagination. In philosophical terms, imagination is the faculty that matches between the perception and the understanding. If we regard the technology as separated from the human, then the inevitable conclusion would be that AI algorithms ruin our ability to imagine. The view presented in this article of co-shaping and co-constitution would lead to the understanding that AI technologies can contribute to the human imagination. Take for example Google’s DeepDream Generator which is a neuronal algorithm that receives a picture as its baseline and transforms it into a hallucinatory image. In each stage-layer, the picture is tweaked and modified in the selected direction. The result is frequently dreamy and artistic39. The

  For other types of AI algorithms see P. Domingos, The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World, London, Penguin Books, 2015. 39   See G. Wellner, I-Media-World: The Algorithmic Shift From Hermeneutic Relations to Writing Relations, in Y. Van den Eede – S. Irwin – G. Wellner, Postphenomenology and Media: Essays on Human–Media–World Relations, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2017, pp. 207-228: 208. 38

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dystopian approach would assert that the algorithm replaces the human and hence damages human imagination. The plateaus-layers model would lead us to see that DeepDream Generator needs the human operator to select a style, i.e. provide a direction, a meaning. The role of the human operator is already acknowledged by the developers who put the following statement in the opening screen of DeepDream Generator’s website: “human-AI collaboration”. The word collaboration hints at the interdependencies between the human and the technological, at the inability of one to function without the other. The layers of imagination that AI produces can guide the user’s imagination. Yet, there is an important role for the human – to bring in new layers (new pictures, new runs) and reveal the meaning (or the political context) as plateaus that link between the layers. Digital subjectivity requires the blending and integration of technologies into the human faculties. The last example of imagination can illustrate the changes implied by digital subjectivity. It demonstrates how imagination, like most human faculties, is co-shaped by our environment, technologies included. Therefore, with the move from machines to digital technologies, imagination has been modified40. In the twentieth century, modern imagination was co-shaped by media technologies such as photography, cinema, and television. Such an imagination focused on finding a new point of view. These media technologies showed us scenes that occurred in remote locations, like other continents, battlefields, or the Earth from outer space. Sometimes they simply revealed the familiar from a fresh new perspective, like a corner of a well-known street, famous people in a private moment, or someone’s expressive face. All these shed a new light on a given aspect. In terms of a dynamic network, the introduction of a media technology “produced” a new image, unthought of before. If modern imagination is a faculty that produces new points of view, digital imagination has a different logic. It operates in a digitally saturated environment, where digital technologies mediate ever-increasing portions of the world. Reality becomes technologically intensive so that even communication between people is more and more mediated by digital technologies, and less performed as a face-to-face interaction. Imagination is no exception and it is frequently enabled and managed by digital technologies. This is what Alber-

40   See G. Wellner, Posthuman Imagination: From Modernity to Augmented Reality, «Journal of Posthuman Studies», 2 (2018) 1, pp. 45-66; G. Wellner, From Cellphones to Machine Learning. A Shift in the Role of the User in Algorithmic Writing, in A. Romele – E. Terrone (ed. by), Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 205-224.

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to Romele terms “emagination”41. The term designates the ability of digital technologies to reconfigure some parts of the human imagination. Under the digital regime, human imagination functions as a set of plateaus that interact with technological layers. The role of the human is to assign meaning to links between existing layers (in AR or AI) or point to potential new layers. Technologies can provide contents for the layers but can hardly suggest new ones or reveal meanings for the novel combinations of them. The links they recommend are statistical and hence depend on the historical data on which the algorithms were trained. If for Kant imagination is the synthesis of sensation and understanding, then in the digital era the interrogation should seek to model the role of technology in sensation and understanding as well as in imagination. The role of human imagination transforms into the production of meaning to the links between the layers. This mode of operation, I argue, is dramatically different from that of the modern imagination. The viewer becomes a user who not only views from various points of view, but can also creatively establish new layers or link existing layers in innovative meaningful combinations. To sum, the rhizome is not composed only of plateaus. In a technologically intensive environment it also includes technological layers. The third example of AI demonstrates that the resemblance of the human and the digital neuronal mechanisms does not mean that one imitates the other. In other words, the concept of co-shaping does not mean imitation or a competition between the human and the technological42. Like the orchid and the wasp, they come close to each other and in that process one complements or extends the other. Both the human and the digital keep changing continuously. In this process, the links between layers and plateaus increase in number and intensify in quality and strength. The human role changes yet remains important as technologies cannot assign meaning, especially social meaning, to their outputs: they cannot understand gender, race and other political structures. Galit Wellner The NB School of Design and Tel Aviv University, Israel [email protected]

41   A. Romele, Imaginative Machines, «Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology», 22 (2018) 1, pp. 98-125. 42   Ibidem, p. 107.

CAN A MAP BE DRAWN OF THE MOST INTERNAL WORLD? AN ATTEMPT TO RECLAIM THE COMMON SENSE

The reemergence of the common sense-term is a peculiar side-effect of the boom in artificial intelligence technology research, even though especially in sociology, political science and linguistic circles of the Anglosphere, it was never really gone. For the sake of brevity, I just want to mention three main strands of more or less current, non-AI common sense-research: first, the mostly historical political common sense-analysis, following Thomas Paine’s famous treatise1. Second, the American Pragmatism and especially Charles S. Peirce’s Pragmaticism and Critical Common-Sensism that have emerged from these sources2. Thirdly, the linguistic-philosophical approach with the Ordinary Language Philosophy inspired by Wittgenstein’s later works3. It is a development of the research of the last few years to see it tied closely to logics, linguistics and computational thinking. Projects like MOSAIC by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence advertise that their aim is to build and program machines equipped with common sense4. The Open Mind

  See: T. Paine, Common Sense, in A. Gulyas (ed. by), Dissent & Protest (1635-2017). Defining Documents in American History, Vol. 1, Ipswich, Salem Press – Grey House Publishing, 2017, pp. 63-73. Cf. also S. Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2011, and F. van Holthoon – D. Olson (ed. by), Common Sense. The Foundations for Social Science, Lanham, MD – London, University Press of America, 1987. 2   Ch. S. Peirce, Issues of Pragmaticism, «The Monist», IV (1905) 15, pp. 481-499. 3   See K. Nyíri, Wittgenstein and Common-Sense Philosophy, in A. Benedek – K. Nyíri (ed. by), Beyond Words: Pictures, Parables, Paradoxes, Frankfurt a. M., Peter Lang Edition, 2015, pp. 231-244, and A. D. Woozley, Ordinary Language and Common Sense, «Mind», CCXLVII (1953) 62, pp. 301-312. 4   A. Talmor et alii, CommonsenseQA: A Question Answering Challenge Targeting Commonsense Knowledge, available on arXiv preprint (arxiv.org), arXiv:1811.00937, 2018, pp. 1-10. 1

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Common Sense Project by Marvin Minsky5, or publications like Commonsense Reasoning by Erik T. Mueller6, take a more language-based, user-centred approach. They focus on human-machine-interaction, reflecting on ways to create machines that can be used easily and intuitively by most persons. It seems to be the firm conviction of a number of scientists that what they call common sense-reasoning or common sense-knowledge is essential in creating and programming dialogue or recommendation systems and information retrieval tools of impeccable, problem-solving, user-friendly quality7. There seems to be a clash between these two common sense-concepts, the former classical and the latter computing one. Nevertheless, the latter is based on the former, even if there are next to no attempts of tracing back the traditions, of covering the foundation for ideas that are used in the work and research process. This in itself seems highly problematic to me. On which grounds are we working on? And, consequently, what meaning has the common sense-term that is used so frequently and so naturally? What substance embraces this concept? On this account, I understand my approach, which is based on the history of philosophy, as an advantage that can benefit the field of AI-research. When speaking about the common sense, working multidisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary seems essential to me. The roots of the common sense-term that we still use today and that the AI-research has now borrowed go deep, and I will start my observations by tracing them back. It is my conviction that it is nonetheless worthwhile to dig them up, even if it can only be brief and rough in this context. In the next step, I will try to work out the changes and shifts in meaning the term is thus subjected to. Language is in a constant state of development and terms change their meaning with time and use. The term of common sense is in fact a very good example. What I still want to point out and to clarify are the unnecessary troubles into which we stumble when we do not think through the signifi5   P. Singh, The Open Mind Common Sense Project, originally published at www.kurzweilai. net, now available at http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs671/12f/12f-papers/singh-omcs-project. pdf [last visited 10 June 2019], 2002, pp. 1-12. See also H. Lieberman et alii, Beating Common Sense into Interactive Applications, «AI Magazine», IV (2004) 25, pp. 63-76. 6   E. Mueller, Commonsense Reasoning, Amsterdam et alii, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2006. 7   See exemplarily both the introductions in: T. Trinh – Q. Le, A Simple Method for Commonsense Reasoning, available on arXiv preprint (arxiv.org), arXiv:1806.02847, 2018, pp. 1-12, and P. Trichelair et alii, On the Evaluation of Common-Sense Reasoning in Natural Language Understanding, available on arXiv preprint (arxiv.org), arXiv:1811.01778, 2018, pp. 1-7. See also Mueller, Commonsense Reasoning, p. 253.

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cance and context of the terms we use and the names we give to our actions. In the third part of this paper, I will elaborate on this and try to find out if there could be an alternative and modern approach to the term and the phenomenon of common sense. 1.  A Historical Perspective: Scottish Common Sense Philosophy In his 1905 published Issues of Pragmaticism, Charles S. Peirce refers to «the old Scotch philosophers» – the Scottish Common Sense Realism, or what is sometimes referred to as the Scottish School of Common Sense, namely Thomas Reid and James Beattie. Peirce acknowledges that he found the fundaments for his Critical Common-Sensism in their writings, mainly in their concept of «original beliefs». Still, he criticizes two points that the Scottish Common Sense lacks and that his Critical Common Sense tries to integrate: that is, for one, the willingness and acceptance of the inherent «vagueness» of the original beliefs, and, second, the disposition to search out and incorporate «doubt»8. We will return to the former, as it is also worthy of discussion here, but will begin with the curious subject of the latter. Reid’s and Beattie’s writings are famous rebuttals of skepticism in general and David Hume’s skeptic thought in particular, that they described as ominous and self-destructive. And yet: With the English Empiricism – Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Locke – Reid, Beattie and Hume share the same traditions and predecessors. But while Hume recognizes and refines the concepts of doubt and skepticism he found in Locke’s writings, Reid and Beattie refuse those, shying away from paradox and «absurdity», the «defect» of «scepticism» and into the seemingly safe world of the «common life» and the «moral sense»9. But it is exactly there that they meet Hume again, who, starting out with Locke’s doubt of «ideas» resulting out of «perception», traversed through Radical Skepticism and seeks shelter within human intuition, the «habit» and «belief» of everyday life10. One could say that the same thing that got him into trouble in the first place – which is, his subjective, psychological approach

  Peirce, Issues of Pragmaticism, p. 484, pp. 486 f. and p. 491.   See T. Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense, Edinburgh, Bell&Bradfute – William Creech, 1814, pp. 29 f., p. 50 f. and pp. 130 ff., and J. Beattie, Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism, London, Edward and Charles Dilly, 1778, pp. 122-132. 10   Cf. D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, New York, Prometheus Books, 1992. 8 9

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to Locke’s and Newton’s physical, sensual and experimental ascertainable world – aided him eventually in dissolving its own problem11. Both Peirce and Reid himself do not seem to realize the tight connections of Reid’s Common Sense with Hume’s Doubt – instead, they choose to emphasize the differences in method and approach. Nonetheless, it remains that Hume’s and Reid’s concept of common sense is a shared one: they both cannot accept the strict, universal skepticism – in a Pyrrhonian sense, what Hume also calls Radical Skepticism12 –; once the skepticism tries to triumph over science and the common, everyday world, declaring their perceptions and knowledge moot, they both refute it. Because they do not have an anchoring, self-sufficient concept of God like Descartes does, but are coming from the groundwork of an early, pioneering, shifting science, what they are factually doing is an anti-Cartesian attempt at reclaiming an Aristotelian sensus communis or koine aisthesis. In the beginning of the third book of De anima13, Aristotle talks about the human perception and the senses of perception as a way of the human soul to gather the external stimuli and the sensory input provided by the world outside of the individual human body. He makes an important distinction between the information provided by the senses and the human intellect that handles them (the senses are never wrong, while the intellect might provide falsities). While he describes five fundamental senses in the human experience, he also states the existence of one primal, underlying sense that allows all human experience in the first place by constituting the groundwork for awareness – the common sense. Aristotle’s concept of the soul is not a spiritual one, it is biological and psychological: the soul cannot exist without a body to inhabit. In the context of the very early, still developing psychology and biology of the 18th century, Aristotle’s sensus communis adapts more nuances and complexity. More so: with Reid, it becomes the foundation of a true, helpful philosophy itself14; for

  Cf. D. Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, New York, The Liberal Arts Press, 1957, pp. 40-68. Cf. J. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983. See also R. Spiertz, Eine skeptische Überwindung des Zweifels? Humes Kritik an Rationalismus und Skeptizismus, Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann, 2001. 12   Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 54 f. 13   Cf. Aristotle, De anima. With Translations, Introductions and Notes by R.D. Hicks, Hildesheim – Zürich – New York, Georg Olms Verlag, 1990, pp. 109-143. 14  Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, pp. 131 ff. 11

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Beattie, it is the condition for truth15. Following Hume, it trumps all doubt in the end. How exactly does it do that? Like we touched upon earlier, reason alone cannot suspend Hume’s Doubt, it needs something more substantial and far more subjective, human belief and habit, which are direct products of the human everyday life and experience16. Like Erich Lobkowicz works out, that puts human beings into some kind of strange intermediate world in between perception and the objective, outside world: because while our perception is geared towards the outside world, we can only experience the latter through this perceptive filter of ourselves17. Hume – like his predecessor Locke – somewhat glosses over how the human perception is established, structured, and how exactly human experience and reflection come together in it. This is what Reid’s criticism problematizes and focuses on, while trying to stick as close as possible to the «common sense» of the «common man». For Reid, human sensation first, and then beliefs form what we describe as perception – before all reason18. Therefore, the reality of the outer world becomes subjective in the mind of the perceiving individual. Sensation is the bodily input of the senses, which is – for lack of a better word – loaded with the content of beliefs. Those are (and this is crucial) not rational, not logical and can be explained just in a somewhat limited way. Some are «original», some are «acquired»19. They are based on principles which are existential, non-falsifiable and which predate every human reasoning and even individual memory: they seem like they were always there and form the groundwork of every further intellectual activity20. Those «first principles» include for example the correctness of certain mathematical axioms, the certainty that I, as a self, exist, that time and history pass by and that we are a part of it, that there is a spatial left and right, up and down etc. In his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, Beattie picks up on Reid’s first principles and elaborates on them. For him, intuitive belief becomes a crucial step towards the truth with respect to the tight connection between common sense and truth. This is founded on the internal principle of

  Beattie, Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, pp. 23 ff.   Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 180-218. 17   E. Lobkowicz, Common Sense und Skeptizismus. Studien zur Philosophie von Thomas Reid und David Hume, Weinheim, Acta Humaniora – VCH, 1986, p. 20. 18   Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind, pp. 44-59. 19   Ibidem, p. 369. 20   Ibidem, p. 52. 15 16

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human identity, the interior sentiment of the self, and the subsequent thinking as a highly personalized, subjective act21. He emphasizes the intuitive, the sensual and the collaborative, collective aspects of Reid’s work, establishing connecting points for, one: the concepts of Moral Sense, like Shaftesbury and Adam Smith for example proposed, and two: a radicalized, inherently political Common Sense, like Thomas Paine put forward 1776, shaping the Northern American struggle for independence (and the democratic basis of the soon-to-be former British colonies). This makes it clear that common sense is not only an immanent subjective concept, insofar it anchors in and establishes self-awareness and perception, it is also in its essence intersubjective. It provides human individuals with a common foundation for communication and the possibility of a common language that includes abstract notions as well as with an idea of human community and society, and their own standpoint in it. 2.  A Current Concept: Common Sense Knowledge and Common Sense Reasoning I want to pick up here on the aspect of language and connect it with Walter Zimmerli’s critique of the problem of intuitive certainty and (logical) deduction of truth in context with the Scottish common sense-concept22. It is also where we reconnect with Peirce’s reference to the jolly «old Scots». Peirce reiterates the criticism that Kant brought up against the Scottish common sense, with all its misconceptions23. His discussion of the Scottish Common Sense philosophy is only brought up in tight relation to his own version of pragmatism – as it is, like Kant’s works, a key influence – but I think it is crucial here that we do not forget Peirce’s Pragmaticism cannot be separated entirely from his occupations as a mathematician and a logician. For Peirce, human society, mathematics and logic are in tight connection. Human everyday experience can be reformulated and interpreted in a formal semiotic logical way. We approach the world through sign relations and reconnect with things through meanings. Unlike Wittgenstein, for example, who approached

  Beattie, Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, pp. 61-76.   W. Zimmerli, „Schulfüchsische“ und „handgreifliche“ Rationalität – oder: Stehen dunkler Tiefsinn und Common Sense im Widerspruch?, in by H. Poser (ed. by), Wandel des Vernunftbegriffs, Freiburg – Munich, Verlag Karl Alber, 1981, pp. 164 f. 23   Ibidem, pp. 151 f. 21 22

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truth and un-truth in a playful manner and treats language as a temporal game, Peirce’s meanings are indefinite24. This is how, in turn, he can criticize Reid for having what he calls «original beliefs» (what Reid called indeed originally «first principles») that are unchanging and, «of the general nature of instincts»25. According to Peirce and his three-layered list of universal categories26, Reid’s first principles are not vague enough. Before there can be a mental interpretation of things, even a correlation to them, there has to be a vague reference to an abstract quality or idea. Following Peirce, Reid’s principles skip those. It is as notable what Peirce leaves aside in this context as what he emphasizes: instead of the senses and a sensual human perception we read in his text about instincts and its modern take. This does fit in neatly with his other remarks and thoughts, but I think it is, once more, beside Reid’s point. We will come back to this curious neglect of the human senses later. For the moment, I want to linger on the consideration that it is Peirce’s concept of language and logic in connection with his Common Sense-ism – not the historical-political normative demands of Thomas Paine-disciples, nor the linguistic games of Ordinary Language Philosophy by Wittgenstein-enthusiasts – that allows the implementation of human logic into computational thinking while simultaneously upholding the conviction that signs (in Peirce’s sense) and their (symbolic) meanings remain untouched and unchanged by this transfer. Both the Thomas Paine-legacy and the Ordinary Language Philosophy are based on significantly different outlooks on both language and humanity: yes, they say, language can hold meaning, even deep, maybe eternal meanings of the most significant and everlasting importance. But it does so in a fleeting, incoherent manner, ever-changing and quite elusive for the human onlooker, who himself is part of this wider transformative process. This process takes place within human community. The human being is – speaking, again, with Aristotle – a zoon politikon, and grows up, lives, and expresses itself in companionship with other humans. Social interchange forms and influences the subject, the way it speaks, the way it thinks, what it thinks. To raise and grow the individual is a, even if often unwitting, joint effort.

  Cf. W. Dörfler, Signs and Their Use: Peirce and Wittgenstein, in A. Bikner-Ahsbahs et alii (ed. by), Theories in and of Mathematics Education. Theory Strands in German Speaking Countries, Hamburg, Springer, 2016, pp. 21-30. 25   Peirce, Issues of Pragmaticism, p. 485. 26   Cf. Ch. S. Peirce, On a New List of Categories, «Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences», VII (1865-1868), pp. 287-298. 24

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Now, with computers lacking a human body, and thus a human sensory perception, a development of speech as well as a community in human evolutionary sense with which to interact, the only way to get something resembling human linguistic behavior out of them is to program it into them27. This is a highly complex and difficult translation effort that programmers and concept makers provide. Jennifer M. Wing begins her Thinking about Computing stating: Computational thinking is taking an approach to solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behaviour that draws on concepts fundamental to computing. Computational thinking is a kind of analytical thinking. (…) The essence of computational thinking is abstraction. In computing, we abstract notions beyond the physical dimensions of time and space. Our abstractions are extremely general because they are symbolic, where numeric abstractions are just a special case28.

What computer, communications and information scientists and computer engineers are trying is to break down information into feasible, logical amounts machines can handle. Under their hands, «Real-World Information becomes Computable Data»29 – not less, but also not more, and with which then one can work further. The digital consists entirely of human knowledge and effort, even if sometimes it is treated like something that can emancipate and be independent from us, be it good-natured or hostile30. But like Paul Davies delivers dryly in his review of Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near: The biggest lacuna in Kurzweil’s argument is the tacit assumption that if we liberate enough information-processing power, then nature will succumb to all our desires. (…) Unfortunately, the laws of physics may well dictate otherwise.

27   Cf. I. Wachsmuth – M. Lenzen – G. Knoblich (ed. by), Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008. 28   J. Wing, Computational Thinking and Thinking about Computing, «Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A», CCCLXVI (2008), p. 3717. Cf. also: R. Kowalski, Computational Logic and Human Thinking. How to be Artificially Intelligent, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2011. 29   See D. Riley – K. Hunt, Computational Thinking for the Modern Problem Solver, Boca Raton – London – New York, CRC Press, 2014, p. 27. 30   Cf. exemplarily the works by Nick Bostrom and Raymond Kurzweil: N. Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014; R. Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, New York, Viking Books, 2005.

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Technology can harness physical laws but it can’t bend them. No amount of information processing will suspend the law of gravity or create perpetual-motion machines31.

I want to add, with heavy reference to Bernhard Irrgang’s article in this very issue32, that the laws that Kurzweil and others overlook in their fear or adoration of the Artificial Superintelligence are also of mental nature. We still cannot grasp fully what human consciousness actually is33, nor are Reid’s questions about human perception and its relation to the senses and cognition answered in their entirety today by modern cognitive research34. How could we even think about creating a machine with consciousness, with intention, with common sense? One answer here is that – even with all of Bostrom’s and Kurzweil’s wild descriptions in mind – this is not the actual goal, at least, not today, not in research and development practice, and not by scientists in the field like Erik T. Mueller for example, who makes sure it is understood that he does not write about human common sense at all, focusing instead on machine common sense reasoning35. Even more: human common sense – and if and in what way it is linked to logic – does not concern him in the slightest in the context of his work, even if he admits earlier on the same page that «studying commonsense» means «a greater understanding of what intelligence is»36. It is my appraisal that this goes hand in hand with Peirce’s view on vague human «instincts» (and therefore dropping the problematic of human senses and perception) and on symbolic signs and their connected meaning, but applying it into computing territory. There are several steps here I have issues with. First: the neglect of the human senses which we already touched upon earlier. I concur fully with Mueller that studying common sense will reveal

  P. Davies, When Computers Take Over. What if the Current Exponential Increase in Information-processing Power Could Continue Unabated?, «Nature», CDXL (2006), pp. 421 f. 32   See: B. Irrgang, Embedded Human Subjectivity and Digital Self, pp. 13-25. 33   See: J. Rychlak, In Defense of Human Consciousness, Washington, DC, American Psychological Association, 1997. 34   Cf. M. Schilling – H. Cruse, The Evolution of Cognition – From First Order to Second Order Embodiment, in I. Wachsmuth – G. Knoblich (ed. by), Modeling Communication with Robots and Virtual Humans, Berlin – Heidelberg, Springer Verlag, 2008, pp. 77-108. 35   Mueller, Commonsense Reasoning, p. XX. 36   Ibidem. For another example of Computing researchers – of Self-aware Computing Systems – who have no interest in the phenomena of human self-awareness or consciousness, see M. Lenzen, Künstliche Intelligenz. Was sie kann und was uns erwartet, Munich, C.H. Beck, 2018, pp. 133 f. 31

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new and exciting insights about intelligence. What I question is, what he does mean when he talks about intelligence – surely, if he separates a psychological human common sense and a logic-based machine common sense reasoning, he would have to make a clear distinction between human intelligence and artificial machine intelligence first. Those two forms of intelligence operate on very different grounds – the first one would use the base of sensory perception and a subjective view of the world. Like Bernhard Irrgang analyzes in his contribution, it is a bodily embedded intelligence in interaction with a lifeworld37. On this grounds, the potential of abstraction, of analytical and comparative thought, of logical thinking arises. Only against this backdrop, an abstract, logical-driven machine intelligence in the digital space can come into existence at all. It is all human work, human effort, and it should be under human control. Second, the linguistics and, by extent, communication and interface issues. Human knowledge – and common sense as a bodily based, tacit part of it38 – is a complex matter, both tacit and explicit, and highly relative, subjective, transformative, complex and difficult to grasp39. What we feed into machines, what we digitalize, is not knowledge in this sense, it is information, broken down, codified bits the machine can work with – data. But it seems at first glance that data-form and common sense-thinking are contradictory40. We see this exemplified in the introductions of Mueller, of Lieberman et alii, of Rosenfeld. When it comes down to give a first impression of what common sense really is, the direct appeal to the reader seems to be a good start. This means listing sentences that are supposed to be true in an intuitive way41. Added bonus: these sentences are easily convertible into data-form. The problem of substance and subject matter then becomes a problem of size, connecting with the hope, that if we can just code enough information

  Cf. Irrgang, Embedded Human Subjectivity and Digital Self.   Th. Fuchs, The Tacit Dimension, «Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology», IV (2001) 8, p. 323. 39   K. Dalkir, Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice, Burlington – Oxford, Elsevier Inc., 2005, pp. 8 ff. 40   Lenzen, Künstliche Intelligenz, pp. 46 ff. 41   «(…) if a person enters a kitchen, then afterward the person will be in the kitchen» (Mueller, Commonsense Reasoning, p. XIX). «Things fall down, not up. Weddings (sometimes) have a bride and a groom. If someone yells at you, they’re probably angry» (Lieberman et alii, Beating Common Sense into Interactive Applications, p. 63). «Hot things can burn you. Two plus two make four. Seeing is believing. Blue is different from black. A leopard cannot change its spots. If I am writing these words, I exist» (Rosenfeld, Common Sense, p. 1). 37 38

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about humans, a lacking common ground between a system and its human user can be bridged42. This is the groundwork on which Push Singh is able to ask: «How big is common sense?»43. But classical common sense is a tacit human quality, a subjective potential and competence, a way of thinking before deliberate thinking, and does not consist of «hundreds of millions of pieces of commonsense knowledge»44. Without critical scrutinizing where these sentences actually come from, and why we think they are true, this repetition blurs the line between habitual belief and intuitive truth, (highly dubitable) information and knowledge. If we do not call into question on what exact grounds we can agree on things, misunderstandings, prejudices and falsities sneak into our thought and, even worse, are written down, agreed upon, programmed and circulated. This would be improper, and go against everything Hume and Reid worked towards with the common sense-concept – their common sense is human and self-aware. Indeed, to reduce their concept of common sense and the «first principles» to a few sentences everyone somewhat more or less agrees are true would lead directly to «absurdity», to pick up a term used by Reid himself. Indeed – third – the alleged gap between real world facts and digital data always occurs when AI-researchers want to ensure that human and machine reasoning are two entirely different and easily separable topics, but closes and magically disappears when aims are verbalized that conjure up a tightly knit connection between those two. Machine common sense-reasoning is specifically made for a better, simpler human-machine-interaction. What we put in those machines directly affects us back – it is supposed to45. In turn, we first have to understand why some things are just true to us: there is a need for a modern, cautious, even wary concept of common sense that brings together the fields of philosophy, of neuropsychology and of computing research. Finally, we might have to get used to the idea that we will never be able to interact with our computers and smartphones the way we interact with other people – and that this might not be a bad thing after all.

  N. C. Krämer: Theory of Mind as a Theoretical Prerequisite to Model Communication with Virtual Humans, in Wachsmuth – Knoblich (ed. by), Modeling Communication with Robots and Virtual Humans, p. 228. 43  Singh, The Open Mind Common Sense Project, p. 3. 44   Ibidem. 45  Mueller, Commonsense Reasoning, p. 253. 42

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3.  A Look Ahead: Reading a Map I want to conclude with a somewhat-out-there analogy that I hope will shed a bit of light on how an alternative modern, phenomenological-hermeneutical approach to the phenomenon of common sense could look like. We have seen earlier that human common sense is inherently subjective and tied to the sensory perception of the lifeworld. The common sense-reasoning programmed into and subsequently done by machines, in contrary, is not, it is entirely digital, and in the form of coded logical linguistics. In her article Maps Do Indeed Produce World, Don’t They? (Karten erzeugen doch Welten, oder?)46, Sybille Krämer explores the connection of human cartographic work, that transforms a former unknown territory into an accessible, measured area of potential action. The science of cartography, like the concept of common sense, has an ancient tradition, but blossomed anew in the 18th century with the exploration of the world with new scientific – and technoscientific – methods47. It is a way to approach and access a topographical big, but also incredibly complex, multi-faceted world, to break it down into codified presentation formats that are readable and comprehensible for those familiar with the concept of a map, and who can then, on that basis, act in this world. This is the primary use of maps: we need them, because we want to act deliberately in real time and space. To do this, humans have to «read» the map and «situate» themselves in it, the own position – in the real world – is understood as an «inside the map». They are observers as well as participants. Following Krämer, the «cartographic paradox» means that there has to be a warping in the depiction, in the mapping of the world on paper, so that the humans reading the map can use it for orientation in the real, unwarped world48. This warping is due to the reducing in dimension, a simplification in representation. There is no way to mistake the two-dimensional, readable, controllable world of symbols a map offers with the world around us. Instead, maps are depictions and conceptions of the world that inherently offer courses of action in this same world49.

  S. Krämer, Karten erzeugen doch Welten, oder?, «Soziale Systeme», I and II (2012) 18, pp. 153-167. 47   Cf. P. Despoix, Die Welt vermessen. Dispositive der Forschungsreise im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Göttingen, Wallstein Verlag, 2009. 48   Krämer, Karten erzeugen doch Welten, oder?, p. 158. 49   Ibidem, p. 166. 46

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By adapting what we supposedly know as a groundwork for the information base of another form of intelligence, without questioning how we know or why we know it, AI-researchers have gotten themselves into a conundrum. When the subjective, bodily fundaments of human senses and perception are taken away, the term becomes hollow – only information bits remain, and those contents are highly doubtable and endangered by misuse. That is why I suggest the comparison of common sense-reasoning to the mapping of the world: because no one would confuse a map with reality. A map is a helpful tool, yes, and with an interesting and rich history and science, but it is decidedly not on par with our lifeworld; it is merely a part of it. Similarly, the common sense-concept of computing research in no way mirrors or even resembles human common sense – machines simply lack the human body, the capacity. But it is still a highly important tool in human-machine-interaction and very promising. Indeed, its full potential implies that it lets us reflect on our own, anthropo-specific mind. Looking up from the map, we see the richness of the world around us. In distinction from machine common sense, we can grasp anew what complex and intrinsic competence there is in us, or, as Reid puts it: «(…) a part of human nature which hath never been explained»50. The question for an explanation therefore arises again. From a phenomenological-hermeneutical perspective, common Sense-­ Reasoning in the computing sector is fundamentally problematic, as a term as well as by its contents. Like Manuela Lenzen describes, the term «Artificial Intelligence» is in itself misleading, because it suggests something that is too human, when it is indeed mechanical. A term like «anthropic computing» would be more fitting. At the same time, it is – on the base of human perception of the world and anthropomorphism – very understandable, that humans attribute thoughts, intentions, plans and wishes to machines, because for them at first glance, they seem to have all of this51. That does not make it more right, though, and along with AI- and robotic-researchers, who continue to use this anthropomorphic terminology and introduce new terms alike, the confusion continues. In this context, common sense is just one example in a long line of misleading terms, beginning with intelligence. At the core of this misconception sits our conception of science, of society and of human beings. Our own stand in the world, the way we think and perceive it, our perspectivity and our subjectivity has not yet found its way into the various scientific disciplines that are determined to shape our future.

 Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind, p. 115.   Lenzen, Künstliche Intelligenz, pp. 18 f.

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We face the curious challenge of needing to strengthen and enhance the exchange and transfer of knowledge, while the research – especially technical and computing research – does get more specialized by the day. To pick up – in closing – on our mapping-analogy again, it is worth to pause for a moment while drawing a map, to look around and reinsure who and what the map is for. It might prevent getting lost at a later point in time. This is why we need to share our aims and our knowledge now, and badly, because our common life is present and real, and what will be produced with respect to the digital sphere will be so on this groundwork. We might want to ensure that this furthers, to speak with Beattie, the «happiness of man». Friederike Frenzel TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

HOW I LEARNED TO SMILE TO ROBOTS. ON ANTHROPOMORPHISM, EMPATHY AND TRANSPARENT TECHNOLOGY DESIGN

Up until now, in items of reacting to robots people haven’t smiled to a robot. Nor have they laughed at a joke told by a robot. But today people actually have these reactions. Seeing this makes me very happy and at the same time convinces me that the age of robots is coming1.

Starting point of this article is not the question of whether a certain age of robots is coming, but rather the observation that people increasingly encounter robots with a smile. It thereby will try to open up a special access to questions and problems of anthropomorphic as well as «emotional»2 and «social»3 design in robotics. By working with people and robots or even by watching the news, one can see people smiling to robots. I, personally, have to admit that I like to smile to robots, too. I like it even more today than before – since I am working on this topic, from a phenomenologically-hermeneutical point of view. In this essay I will try to explain how I found to a deliberate, unimpeded way to look – and to smile – at robots. By putting the whole psychological background aside and just looking phenomenologically at it: smiling to somebody has something communicative, interactive. Smiling to a robot can, in parts, also have something of this, when it is a reaction of something the robot is or does. But in-between this the

1   Kaname Hayashi, developer of the robot ‘Pepper’, in: D. Cornish – J. Tozer, Robot Love in Japan, documentary SBS (Dateline, episode 9, April 11, 2017, online at: https://www.sbs. com.au/news/dateline/story/robot-love-japan, last seen 2019-7-22). 2   See, e.g., D. Norman, Emotional Design. Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, New York, Basic Books, 2004. 3   See, e.g., A. Sachs, Social Design. Participation and Empowerment, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Lars Müller Publishers, 2018.

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term decision seems relevant. In addition comes the topic of transparency in the design of robots and avatars. In this context, the subject of scope/latitude (in German: Spielraum) in designing as well as in the use of robots and other technical artifacts opens up. In turn, studies on fiction and empathy can be connected – with the aim to stimulate new ways in design of and interaction with robots. 1.  Transparency Transparency – related to the design of robots, but also avatars and other ‘socially’ effective applications – can be understood in several ways. So, initially, transparency is a useful term within the meaning of invisibility of objects in the context of what Verbeek4, e.g., calls mediation. The Dresden philosopher Gerd Grübler examined in his paper about brain-computer-interfaces the special sort of bodily connection to artifacts we know as «Zuhandenheit»5 – handiness/readiness-to-hand. Since Heidegger we know a hammer can ‘dissapear’ while hammering. People can ‘forget’ the difference, the distance between themselves and e.g. a bicycle by riding or the cutlery by eating. At the latest when something on the bicycle – or on the hammer6 – breakes, latest when you lay the spoon back beside the plate – or use it particularily for decoration – you will be able, sometimes almost forced to look at it (again). This is what we know, since Heidegger, as being present-at-hand. 2015 Grübler showed in his philosophical-anthropological study that also brain-computer interfaces have the potential to become ‘transparent’, as he states7. What is already known from normal everyday practice, can happen with computer-brain-interfaces, too: a technological artifact (medium) and the human body are no separate objects to address each by itself; even computer-brain-interfaces can become ‘forgotten’ in their use8. Grüblers newly

4   See P.-P. Verbeek, What Things Do: Philosophical Reflextions on Technology, Agency, and Design, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania University Press 2005, pp. 114 ff. 5   See M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1993, §§ 15-18. 6   See L. Merkel, Hau den Heidegger, installation for a philosophy exhibition in Dessau, online at: www.lindamerkel.de/2017/02/08/hau-den-heidegger – last seen 2019-7-22. 7   See G. Grübler, Gehirn-Computer-Schnittstellen als Modelle der philosophischen Anthropologie, in G. Banse – A. Rothkegel (ed. by), Neue Medien. Interdependenzen von Technik, Kultur und Kommunikation, Berlin, trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, 2014, pp. 281-295. 8   Ibidem, p. 292.

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introduced concept of transparency actually marks an interesting and relevant difference to the terms of artifacts being ready-to-hand or present-at-hand. These two terms refer more to the human, the user of technological artifacts. Grübler’s term seems to refer more to a property of the artefacts themselves, which has not been discussed this way by Heidegger. It is interesting that, with Grübler, also the body itself – i.e., the use of the body by its owner – can be called ‘transparent’; as well as in the case of some kind of ‘failure’, e.g. illness, pain or injury, it can be described as being ‘intransparent’9. It seems the human body can remain present-at-hand, vorhanden, too. Then the body can become an object. In design and engineering we already have the term transparent design10, where it mostly – and thereby somehow substracting – means translucent objects and materiality. More interesting is how Peter-Paul Verbeek used the term in his philosophy for design and engineering in his book What Things Do. Speaking about transparent artifacts, he emphazises a «functional clarity» that would make the key components of a product – and what they do – clearer to the owner or user of these products. Beside this, transparency can make clearer how to repair or replace these components11. «Their functioning should be understandable and accessible»12. Verbeek’s technically and aesthetically really interesting example here is the color printer ‘Ithaca’, designed by Donald Carr. Verbeek claims that products are not transparent enough, whenever it is impossible – in case, for instance, of a break – to bring an artefact back to the state of readiness-to-hand after it became present at hand: f. e. transparent products seem to be «devoid of obstacles that stand in the way of our being able to restore their functioning»13. As Verbeek points out, transparent design is «a way of stimulating engagement» – not only in the «focal, meaning-giving engagement» Borgmann wrote about, but also in a more bodily-sensorial engagement14. In the 2013 AAAI Spring Symposium, Joseph B. Lyons already stressed a sort of psychological theory of transparency in human-robot-interaction. This means transparency in understanding the intent and purpose of a robot; transparency about ‘why’ the robot has

  See ibidem, p. 287.   See, e.g., J. Bulk (ed. by), Welt aus Glas. Transparentes Design, Ausstellungskatalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung (24.11.2017 – 22.4.2018), Köln, Wienand, 2018. 11   See Verbeek, What Things Do, pp. 225-228. 12   Ibidem, p. 226. 13   Ibidem. 14   See ibidem, pp. 226 ff. 9

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been created, whether to provide customer service, elderly care, emotional support, medical advice, or some other form of support15. Transparent design in times of digitalisation needs perspectives like these. The above approaches fit to the problem of the often so-called black boxes in design of technological artefacts. In this context, new reflections have recently been made in exactly the opposite direction: the observation that high-tech artefacts, especially those within digital technologies, are difficult to understand and are themselves curiously active. This leads considerations about countering this problem of the ‘black boxes’ by triggering animistic tendencies on behalf of the users – as happened in the German anthology Beseelte Dinge. Design aus Perspektive des Animismus. As already mentioned elsewhere16, explorative experimentation with new design possibilities in conjunction with observation of users behaviour is anything but negative. But it should not overlook the complexity and difficulties that arise when animism and anthropomorphism in design are used as mere tools for so-called acceptance or ‘joy of usage’. As shown by Coeckelbergh17, Verbeek18, but also in the above mentioned design research anthology, there are some philosophical approaches that deal with the relations between humans and technology and the recent animism. A conscious and reflected decision for or against assumptions about any kind of animism in objects should precede appropriate design approaches. Furthermore, it seems to be beneficial to communicate the respective decision openly – to make it transparent. The creative handling of such a fundamental decision shows the scope, the ‘Spielraum’, in design. It seems to be in the spirit of an honest, open, communicative society that developers and designers do not disguise the way in which they use the scopes that open up in the development and design of technology. To explain this, a brief look at the notion of scope/Spielraum is necessary.

  J. B. Lyons, Being Transparent About Transparency: A Model for Human-Robot Interaction, AAAI Spring Symposium: “Trust and Autonomous Systems”, 2013 (www.aaai.org/ocs/ index.php/SSS/SSS13/paper/view/5712, last seen 2019-7-22). 16   See M. Unger-Büttner, Beseelte Dinge – selige Designer? Spiegelungen gesellschaftlicher und philosophischer Debatten in den Designwissenschaften, «DESIGNABILITIES Design Research Journal», 3 (2017); https://designabilities.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/unger-buettner-mar2017/, last seen 2019-7-22. 17   M. Coeckelbergh, The Moral Standing of Machines: Towards a Relational and Non-­ Cartesian Moral Hermeneutics, Dordrecht, Springer, 2013; Id., Growing Moral Relations. Critique of Moral Status Ascription, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 18   P.-P. Verbeek, COVER STORY: Beyond Interaction: A Short Introduction to Mediation Theory, «Interaction», 22 (2015) 3, pp. 26-31; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2751314, last seen 2019-7-22. 15

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2.  Scopes in Design – ‘Spielraum’ As long as we decide to surround ourselves with man-made artifacts like robots, they always have to have some certain shape. Every design solution is a commitment within a wide variety of scope/Spielraum19 of possibilities – Karl Eduard von Hartmann stressed this already in 1888 and Andreas Dorschel used Hartmanns remarks amplificatorily for his special aesthetics of useful things20. In his Philosophie des Schönen (Philosophy of the Beautiful) Hartmann described the so-called scope or latitude (German: Spielraum) that exists between purposes, technology and the material21. (The German word Spielraum means, directly translated, something like play-room – sadly no English term can mirror the experimental, almost fictional appeal given by the German term). With Dorschel, I want to point out that those who do not use these scopes in design and engineering and just follow trends, or traditions also make a decision. Even those who want to be guided by chance, make their decision here, too22. There are scopes in the use of technical artefacts, too – just as there are scopes also in the understanding of media or literary content. Here, the role of hermeneutics has led to reflections on a technical hermeneutics23. This, in short, is an approach to the interpretation of technical artifacts. Now, the demand for more transparency in design in general and in the design of robots in particular opens up a new opportunity to specifically address the scopes that are offered to the users. As mentioned elsewhere, Don Ihde’s thoughts about the ‘designer fallacy’ can show engineers and designers the limitations of their efficacy in the use of their products – and thereby a sort of relief in responsibility, too. (This also points back to the individual morality of the designer and doesn’t relieve him or her from the question of responsibility)24. Ihde opens up a complex,   See, e.g., M. Unger-Büttner, Guest Editoral in Ead. (ed. by), Philosophy and Design for All, «A Publication of Design for All Institute India», 12 (2017) 12, pp. 10-14 (http://www. designforall.in/newsletterdec2017.pdf, last seen 2019-7-22). 20   A. Dorschel, Gestaltung. Zur Ästhetik des Brauchbaren, Heidelberg, C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 2002, pp. 62-70. 21   K.-E. von Hartmann, Philosophie des Schönen, in Id., Ausgewählte Werke, 2. Ausgabe, Bd. IV, Leipzig 1888, p. 140. 22   Dorschel, Gestaltung, pp. 63 ff. 23   See L. Leidl – D. Pinzer (ed. by), Technikhermeneutik. Technik zwischen Verstehen und Gestalten, Frankfurt a. M., Peter Lang, 2010. 24   See M. Unger, „Ich, der ich Einer bin“ – von sokratischen Stechfliegen, eingefrorenen Häusern und kreativem Umgang mit Moral, in Allianz deutscher Designer (AGD) e.V. (ed. by), agenda design. Magazin für Gestaltung, Ausgabe 1., Braunschweig, 2015, pp. 12-17. 19

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interactive account of design interpretation – where the ‘designer fallacy’ is defined as the notion that designers can «design into a technology, its purposes and uses»25. In various examples, he shows how much different the design of an object can be interpreted and the artefact can be used. In design research one can find terms like ‘non intentional design’ or ‘design by use’ – meaning the phenomenon that people take things that have already been designed and use them in partly completely different ways, converting them to new uses26. Almost everybody will know how to use a beverage crate as a sort of seating furniture or the use of a lipstick for writing messages on a mirror – as if it was a pen. So, people already use artefacts in a sort of as-if mode – and in case their behaviour is conscious to them, they should see that they decide to do so by and for themselves. This opens up an approach to theories of the fictional as well as to the philosophy of the ‘as-if’ by Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933),27 and currently accentuated by the psychiatrist and philosopher Thomas Fuchs. 3.  The ‘As-If’ In-between Anthropomorphism and Transparency «Being able to distinguish between the factual and the fictional, or between the real and the virtual, is a fundamental capacity of the human mind»28, Thomas Fuchs recently wrote. With Vaihinger, Fuchs shows the «highly dramatic power and tension» that arises between both terms: (1) The “as“ (German als, wie; French comme) signifies a comparison: Two items are brought into a relation of similarity or analogy. (2) This comparison is now questioned or even partially suspended by the “if“ (German ob, wenn; French sí) (…). (3) Now the combination “as-if” (German als ob, wie wenn; French comme si; Latin quasi) implies the decision to assert the comparison despite its partial suspen-

  D. Ihde, The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination, in P. E. Vermaas – P. Kroes (ed. ), Philosophy and Design. From Engineering to Architecture, Milton Keynes, Spinger, 2009, pp. 51-59: 51. 26   See, e.g., U. Brandes, Design by Use. The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2008; U. Brandes – M. Erlhoff, Non Intentional Design, New York, DAAB Media, 2006. 27   See H. Vaihinger, The Philosophy of ‘As If’: A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind, trans. C. K. Ogden, London, Kegan Paul, 1924. 28   See Th. Fuchs, The „As-If“ Function and its Loss in Schizophrenia, in M. Summa – T. Fuchs – L.Vanzago (ed. by), Imagination and Social Perspectives: Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology, London, Routledge, 2017. 25

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sion. The result is an irreal comparative clause: Something given is compared with something other, whose unreality or impossibility is declared at the same time29.

In view of this as-if-mode the question of anthropomorphism of robots and avatars can take a new perspective. Anthropomorphism does not have to concern only appearance – the design –, although this is the main perspective here. Different concepts of anthropomorphism and personification can help to broaden this perspective30. Theology differentiates between physical and mental (in German: psychisch) anthropomorphism: physical anthropomorphism means something divine being presented in a ‘human’ form. Mental anthropomorphism is the ascription of feelings, thoughts and impulses to the divine – thus turning it into a ‘person’31. Kant made another important distinction: that between dogmatic and symbolic anthropomorphism32. With him it can be called “dogmatic” to ascribe human similarity to a highest being, whether physical, psychic, or both. Symbolic anthropomorphism concerns only the language, the speech about an object33. This is where the metaphorical element of anthropomorphizing comes into play. So, calling the computer an ‘electronic brain’ to illustrate its way of working could be called a symbolic anthropomorphism. But imputing bad intentions into the computer – if it does not work as expected –, or ascribing a sort of human character to a robot because of its human-like appearance, would rather correspond to a dogmatic anthropomorphism. Perhaps Kant would refuse to extend his concept of anthropomorphism to such everyday things, but it serves well to illustrate different forms of anthropomorphization. Symbolic anthropomorphism has some similarities to the theological concept of the physical – anthropomorphism here is more related to appearance. Mental anthropomorphism seems to refer to Kant’s dogmatic anthropomorphism, since both include the attribution of internal personality traits.

 See ibidem, p. 84.   The following has been elaborated earlier in M. Unger, Anthropomorphismus und Technikgestaltung. Über menschenähnliche Oberflächen in der Entwicklung Künstlicher Intelligenz, «designethik», 2008 (http://designethik.de/files/Anthropomorphismus%20und%20 Technikgestaltung.pdf). 31   See F. Kirchner, Wörterbuch d. phil. Begriffe, Hamburg, Meiner, 1998, p. 50. 32   See I. Kant, Schriften zur Metaphysik und Logik, in Id., Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd. 3, ed. by W. Weischedel, Darmstadt, WBG, 1998, pp. 232 ff. 33   See ibidem; see also F. Kirchner, Wörterbuch d. phil. Begriffe, p. 50; E. Tietel, Das Zwischending. Die Anthropomorphisierung und Personifizierung des Computers, Regensburg, Roderer, 1995, p. 225. 29

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It seems Thomas Fuchs’ thoughts about the as-if-mode could help to go further from here. His term ‘as if’ can be a solution for the human tendency to personify or ‘humanize’ technical artefacts. «Something given is compared with something other, whose unreality or impossibility is declared at the same time», Fuchs points out. While playing with a child, one may use a banana as a telephone and talk into it – while this banana «obviously disclaims this usage through its visible presence». Thus, the expression ‘as-if’ shows an «ambiguous, oscillating structure: It implies a kind of double intention which holds both items present and sharply separated at the same time»34. – In the Dresden phenomenological-hermeneutic philosophy of technology, oscillation is a frequently used image for the philosophical and ethical exploration of scopes of possibilities, which can be marked by the terms ‘both… and’ (German: ‘sowohl – als auch’)35. Accordingly, the banana can be seen both as a telephone and still as a banana too, at the same moment. Thomas Fuchs’ concept of empathy can sharpen this topic: Fuchs stresses the so-called ‘paradox of fiction’ – the fact that we can feel empathy for a ‘person’ that we know does not exist at all. This is not based on an irrational attitude or an illusion, but on the peculiarity of a special ‘fictional consciousness’, an oscillation between two perspectives on the given situation36. This assumption is grounded in Fuchs’ distinction between real and fictional empathy. For Fuchs neuro-constructivism corresponds to a social development in which the distinction between artificial and natural, between image and the original, appearance and the reality, is increasingly leveled out. This is based on the ability to fiction, to simulation – to the ‘as-if-mode’. The perception of the other, the empathic intersubjectivity often entails elements of fictionality. Empathy can disconnect itself from the encounter and spread into the fictitious and the illusionary. For Fuchs people are quite empathic with their own projections. On the one hand, the range of human empathy is thus almost unlimited. On the other hand, the more it is disconnected from an immediate bodily experience, the less it can capture the other, but becomes a mere picture, indeed an often unreadable projection – a ‘semblance of the other’37.

34   Th. Fuchs, Der Schein des Anderen. Empathie und Virtualität, in T. Breyer (ed. by), Grenzen der Empathie. Philosophische, psychologische und anthropologische Perspektiven, Munich, Fink, 2013, pp. 263-282: 270 (italics in original). 35   See, e.g., B. Irrgang, Hermeneutische Ethik. Pragmatisch-ethische Orientierung in technologischen Gesellschaften, Darmstadt, WBG, 2007. 36   Fuchs, Der Schein des Anderen, p. 271. 37   See ibidem, p. 265.

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Fuchs distinguishes between a primary, implicit or physical empathy (1), an extended, explicit or imaginative empathy (2) and a fictional empathy (3). The second already entails an element of virtuality. In order to develop the concept of this secondary, extended empathy, Fuchs dismantles the often insufficiently understood concept of primary empathy: With Polanyi he emphasizes that in primary empathy there is no ‘as if’, because the bodily sensations and the sensations of movement that resonate in the encounter with the other are only implicitly part of the perception of expression. On the basis of primary empathy, we are also able to make ourselves aware of the other’s situation as such, we make it present to ourselves: what could have made her so angry, outraged or hurt, why was someone in favor of this in that situation, etc. This way we expand our understanding and deepen our empathy38. Of course, this component of empathy is of a different kind than the first one. It contains, on the one hand, an explicit operation, namely the deliberate visualization of the other’s situation, often with the help of additional information that can not be directly extracted from the situation; on the other hand, it means an imaginative operation, namely the transposition within the consciousness of the ‘as if’ (as if I were the other)39. Fuchs’s concept of fictional empathy seeks to describe the extension of empathy to fictitious individuals or non-personal agents. This starts with inanimate objects such as the moving geometric figures in the film of the social attribution test by Heider and Simmel40, goes on with robots and avatars showing an ‘as-if-intentionality’ (like HAL in Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’), as well as pictures and films of persons, literary figures and also letters or messages from people who are not present at the moment41. The difference between secondary and fictional empathy lies in a different as-if-mode: In secondary empathy the other is treated as if it was real, but just not present. The as-if-mode of fictional empathy, the fictional consciousness, puts the other as non-real. In Fuchs’s example this works even in theatre in which the actress, but not Maria Stuart herself is given. Fuchs describes this fictional empathy as a cognitively demanding performance, an achievement of early childhood. Beside this, in psychopathology, psychosis is often associated with a collapse of this imaginative ‘as-if’42.

 See ibidem, p. 267.  See ibidem, pp. 267ff. 40   See F. Heider – M. Simmel, An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior, «The American Journal of Psychology», 57 (Apr. 1944) 2, pp. 243-259. 41   See Fuchs, Der Schein des Anderen, p. 269. 42   See ibidem, p. 271. 38 39

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4.  Making Rational Decisions Possible for or against an Emotional Access As already explained in more detail elsewhere43, Jutta Weber criticized in 2010 the fixation on a social, emotional access and attribution to machines, without even juxtaposing different human-machine models in usability studies. There seems to be no question of an emotional immersion into the interaction with more or less anthropomorphic robots or avatars – and a very little interest in the analytical capacity of the user44. Maybe, with Vaihinger’s and Fuchs’s philosophies of the ‘as if’ and the concept of fictional empathy, we don’t need that much emphasis on rationality and the analytical thinking here. People are already treating robots in the as-if-mode of fictional empathy. But it seems there is a gap in the consideration of emotional approaches to robots that can be more closely examined with the help of Fuchs’s concepts. The rationality accented by Jutta Weber comes into play when designers decide deliberately for transparence in technology design and do not just focus on emotional immersion for its own sake. It also comes into play when people/‘the users’ are able to make conscious decisions for or against treating robots or plush toys or even their car as if they were a person or an animal or something alike. From this point of view, there is no much need to make robots and avatars human-like or even android today. Designers should always be able to offer alternatives. However, given the quite well-known tendency of people to personalify and ‘humanize’ technology, this human tendency should be dealt with in an open, transparent way. An example for the lack of transparency in the development of robots can be the so-called ‘Wizard of Oz-Szenario’. (Computer scientists in Germany name it this way; in English it seems to be more often called the ‘Wizard of Oz Experiment’ or ‘-method’ or the ‘OZ Paradigm’). This phrase has come into common usage in the fields of experimental psychology, ergonomics, linguistics, and usability engineering to describe a testing or iterative design methodology wherein an experimenter in a laboratory setting simulates the behaviour of a theoretically ‘intelligent’ computer application. Like the Wizard in the eponymous children’s book and film, somebody is sitting behind a curtain or in a separate room, operating machinery and intercepting all communications between participants in the experiment and the system. Sometimes participants know about this, sometimes it is a ‘low-level deceit’ used to manage the participant’s expectations and encourage natural behav  See Unger-Büttner, Beseelte Dinge, selige Designer, p. 4.   See J. Weber, New Robot Dreams. On Desire and Reality in Service Robotics, in Museum Tinguely, Robotdreams, Basel, Kehrer Verlag, 2010, pp. 40-61: 54. 43

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iours towards the artefact45. Of course, people know robots or avatars are being programmed by somebody. People know that there is a special amount of possible ‘answers’ from which the robot-guide in the museum is selecting when ‘talking’ to the visitors. The Wizard of Oz-Szenario can be a sign of this ‘as-if-mode’, in Fuchs’ terms, in an almost violently obvious way. But mostly people do not recognise it in the setting. Another problem lies in the design of robots themselves: the impact of the so-called ‘uncanny valley’ is quite well known. Shortly said, the more humanlike an android robot looks and appears, the more this appearance can become somehow ‘too much’ and its artificiality seems to explode in the eye of the spectator. This seems to be the moment when the ‘as if’ touches something like a sort of ‘what if’46. What if we would design artefacts and situations like this more transparently? Not ‘transparent’ in terms of immersion into a situation, nor the kind of transparency Gerd Grübler was speaking about, but transparency in communication and design. One could discuss many different expressions for this, especially in design – something like ‘honest’ or ‘plain design’. But the term ‘transparent design’ seems to be much more appropriate, since it is not normative by now. As mentioned above, Peter-Paul Verbeek pointed out that for a better relation it should simply be clear to the owners or users of products «what the key components are and what they do»47. He states that transparency makes attachment between people and products possible in two ways: first, a transparent design seems easier to maintain a relation with a product even when it breaks down. «Second, and more important, it makes it possible for people to become involved with products as material entities. For when a product is transparent, it is not only functionally present but exhibits how it is functioning»48. To display the main modes of operation of a technological artefact could be a solution for some of the questions about our relationship to robots.   See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment (last seen 2019-7-22).   For a brief connection of this exploratory question to design and ethics, see B. Franke, Design as Ethical and Moral Inquiry, «Copenhagen Working Papers on Design», 1 (2010), pp. 71-72: «Explorative design is not asking “what ought to be” but rather “what could be” or “What would be if…?” Normative judgements are replaced with explorations of possibilities of existence by “trying out” these possibilities – similar to the way literature explores these issues». See also: M. Unger-Büttner, Zukunft – Design – Ethik. Ein exploratives Gemisch, in K. Berr – J. Franz (ed. by), Zukunft gestalten. Digitalisierung, Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) und Philosophie, Berlin, Frank & Timme, 2019, pp. 41-54. 47  Verbeek, What Things Do, p. 227. 48   Ibidem. 45 46

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Knowing that our empathy towards robots could merely be an empathy of the third order (the fictional one), in Thomas Fuchs’ terms, could allow an even deeper immersion into our dealing and feeling with and towards robots – if we are trusted with seeing and knowing more about the functioning of the robot. This implies different kinds of transparency in the design of robots, than those we already have, e.g.: –– Transparency in communication about technical possibilities. Privacy-­ related topics or ‘skills’ of technical artefacts, e.g., must not disappear in the small written terms of use. –– Transparency in studies: Wizard of Oz Scenarios – or at least its eventuality – should be clearely explained to all participants. –– Transparency in the design of artifacts as mentioned by Verbeek. –– Transparency about decisions in the design process by using the scopes/ Spielraum in design. The robot iCub49 can serve as an example for the last point. The basic design of iCub seems to have been focused on clarifying its function: iCub was developed for the purpose of simulating a robot’s physical and mental development of a toddler. The small child pattern has been used in iCub for years now, generating both medial and political effectiveness. It is difficult to find out why a research object for university use in the context of machine learning needs such an emotionally touching outer shape. Unfortunately, there seem to be no or only a few studies that address the aesthetic impact of iCub within the framework of the research projects, i.e. the way scientists deal with the robot in their every day work. From a design point of view, however, the shape of the plastic shell displaying iCubs’ ‘face’ works quite well. This plastic element, in turn, provides an unparalleled smooth transition of the gaze to the body of iCub. This body is known to be very technical. Many of the complex technical mechanisms, right down to his five-finger hands, are fully visible. The overall shape of the robot offers a well-functioning small child pattern, with its balanced dimensions and proportions. Thus, in a very specific aesthetic and downright technology-analogous way, iCub simultaneously provides an emotional, personifying access while at the same time allowing transparency about its technological origin (oscillation).

  For more information see the open source cognitive humanoid robotic platform, www. icub.org (last seen 2019-7-22). 49

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These relationships of anthropomorphism and transparency are quite different in the case of the robot Sophia from Hanson Robotics50, whose special aesthetics may be relatively familiar at the latest due to its media presence after the granting of Saudi Arabian citizenship in 2017. By only looking at the very human-like, skin-colored, made-up face, the viewer can quickly fall into the uncanny valley. Mostly clothed like a woman, the body gives little information about its artificiality. But the back of the head (which, by the way, functionally does not necessarily have to be the bearer of any central control units) gives an almost shocking insight into an apparently deliberately staged technical interior. As a third, special example can be mentioned the robot Scitos A5 from Metralabs in Ilmenau/Germany51. It can not really be called anthropomorphic, rather it resembles a play figure, consisting solely of a spherical ‘head’ on a conical body. But in the transparent sphere that forms the head, there are two further blue spheres, which a human beholder will immediately recognize as ‘eyes’. The remarkable feature of this design is that these eyes exclusively serve as a benchmark for the viewer’s gaze and do not serve any visual perception on the part of the robot itself. The design decision of creating this solely communicative function of the robot’s ‘eyes’, however, is really noteworthy in the sense of a transparent design. Unfortunately, only a few people who know this robot model, for example in its function as a museum guide in the Technical Collections in Dresden, recognise that these ‘eyes’ are only there for the viewer. These eyes seem to serve the mere ‘as-if-mode’ itself. Maybe, knowing more explicitely that a ‘relationship’ with a robot is happening in this ‘as-if-mode’ could even help recognize something that can be understood as the essence of aesthetic perception: Self-reference. The German philosopher and aesthetician Martin Seel explains aesthetic perception as a practice of perception that applies the attention to oneself for the sake of oneself52. This means perception for the sake of perception itself and, simultaneously, for the perceiving self as well as the perceived itself, too. Seel makes a distinction between all-day perception and aesthetic perception (in distinction to something like a more pragmatic perception): aesthetic perception is oriented at performance or the action itself (in German Seel calls it “vollzugsorientiert”). So, e.g., in a real aesthetic situation, my personal perception of iCub can be fully oriented at me perceiving this fascinating ro  See www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia (last seen 2019-7-22).   See www.metralabs.com/service-roboter-scitos-a5/ (last seen 2019-7-22). 52   M. Seel, Ethisch-ästhetische Studien, trans. M. Unger-Büttner, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1996, p. 15. 50 51

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bot here and now. Something like this is what separates every day perception from aesthetic perception53. When the design of a robot like iCub opens up a chance to decide whether I want to treat that robot as if it was a small child, or not – for here and now –, then my relation to this robot can be much more transparent to me. I can watch a robot ‘learning’ to grab a ball, or/and I can let myself fall deeply into the fictional empathy of watching a ‘child’ ‘discovering’ the world – and smile to this robot. Manja Unger-Büttner TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

  See Seel, Ethisch-ästhetische Studien, pp. 46-51.

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1.  Prologue In a famous scene from an episode of the well known British TV series “Black Mirror”1 – the third one of the first season, broadcast in 2011, entitled “The Entire History of You” – we can find a depiction of an augmented reality in which most people have a microchip implanted behind their ear that records every action in their everyday life. This technology allows memories to be played back either in front of the person’s eyes or on a hologramatic screen: the episode explores the pitfalls of digital technology through the neurotic breakdown of the protagonist, Liam, who starts to suspect his wife of having a secret affair with an old friend of hers. He begins to obsess over his memories, searching through them for evidence of an affair – until he finds it. In the main scene, Liam dramatically argues with is wife and blames her for lying: the way she replies to him shows the ambiguity that is increasingly affecting our living, since high technologies have become embedded in our everyday life. “Not everything that isn’t true is a lie”, is the argument of Liam’s wife: we could generally agree or disagree with such a statement on a moral level, but would this statement still be true or even have a meaning, if we had a special technology that allows us to record all our memories visually and to play back them on a screen, and to search through them for particular moments and events of our past life? That’s exactly the point with lifelogging. Contemporary technologically advanced societies are irreversibly and crucially marked by the progressive erosion of the distinction between reality and virtuality. The interesting aspect of this “erosion” is that it takes the form of an increasing integration between two levels: following the rise of the digital   Cf. Black Mirror, Season 1, Episode 3: The Entire History of You, written by J. Armstrong, 2011-2014: Channel 4 (2014 – present: Netflix). 1

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era, virtual components have come to be integrated into the everyday life of individuals, which in turn affects the virtual level. What does it mean for a human being to move within an integrated or “augmented” reality that is structurally marked by the functional combination of what were hitherto clearly distinct spheres? What does it mean to be a sentient subject that experiences such a reality from within? “Black Mirror” episode dramatically illustrates the porosity of the boundary between real and virtual life in contemporary technological societies2. The members of this alternative, augmented reality can be considered ‘lifeloggers’: by lifelogging we understand a specific, very recent3 phenomenon of digital technology, which falls within the range of practices of the Quantified Self (recently the two phenomena have been compared, despite some crucial differences)4. Lifelogging is a complex form of self-management through self-monitoring and self-tracking practices, which combines the use of wearable computers for measuring psycho-physical performances (heartbeat, caloric consumption, distance covered, emotional states etc.) through specific apps for the processing, selecting and retrieving of the data collected, possibly in combination with video recordings (including live streaming). The most common definition of lifelogging describes it as «a form of pervasive computing which utilises softwares and sensors to generate a permanent, private and unified multimedia record of the totality of an individual’s life experience and makes it available in a secure and pervasive manner» (NTCIR-13 LifelogTask)5. A variety of tools/activities are are employed by lifeloggers for this purpose:   «As is often the case in science fiction, The Entire History Of You explores the pitfalls of future technology. Given our current appetite for sharing carefully selected chunks of our personal lives on the Internet, the idea of people in the future recording and sharing memories isn’t too much of a stretch, and the way the episode depicts it is quite convincing, and extremely eerie» (R. Lemby, Black Mirror Episode 3 Review, «Den of Geek», Dec 19, 2011. Online at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You, retrieved June 17, 2019). 3   In 2014 lifelogging has been referred to as «a technology in its infancy» by Gurrin-­ Smeaton-Doherty (cf. C. Gurrin – A. F. Smeaton – A. R. Doherty, Lifelogging: Personal Big Data, «Foundations & Trends in Information Retrieval», 8 [2014] 1, p. 99). 4   I agree with Gurrin-Smeaton-Doherty that the key difference between lifelogging and quantified self analytics is that the latter is a more goal-oriented practice, whereas lifelogging is a more indiscriminate tracking and logging of our life experiences, which is based on the assumption that the everyday life of individuals as a whole can actually be passively recorded – although this “total recording” of life experiences is not possible currently, due to limitations in sensor hardware (ibidem, p. 96). 5   Cf. http://ntcir-lifelog.computing.dcu.ie/ (retrieved June 17, 2019). As noted by Gurrin-­ Smeaton-Doherty, «there is no universal or agreed definition of lifelogging and there are many 2

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1.  Passive visual capture: the continuous and automatic capturing of life activities as a visual sequence of digital images through wearable cameras. 2.  Personal biometrics: tracking data regarding human performances through apps for smartphones and tablets, as well as wearable devices. 3.  Communication Activities: logging and sharing the data collected with others through communicative tools – such as SMS messages, instant messages, phone calls, video calls, social network activities, email exchanges – and so on. This also implies that data are constantly consumed, reshaped and created “socially” through forms of digital participation. 4.  Environmental Context and Media: Sensors in our houses, surveillance cameras in the environment, also capture user activities and the environmental context. Given that lifelogging, as a private form of self-tracking, is becoming increasingly widespread in technologically advanced societies and that practices related to it are becoming part of most people’s everyday lives, it is more important than ever to gain an understanding of the phenomenon6. In this paper I am interested in particular in exploring the issue of the transformations in the perception, comprehension and construction of self, and hence in subjectification practices, deriving from the increasing integration of virtual and augmented reality and every-day life that is typical of lifelogging activities. 2.  Total Recall Although the first attempts at lifelogging were carried out in the 1980s, it is only from the 2000s that the phenomenon started spreading systematically. It first earned some recognition in 2005, when the website trendwatching. com introduced the expression “life caching” to describe the sharing of inactivities which are referred to as lifelogging, each producing some form of a lifelog data archive. Some of the more popular of these activities include quantified-self analytics, lifeblogs, lifeglogs, personal (or human) digital memories, lifetime stores, the human black box, and so on» (ibidem, p. 3). However, most of scholars and researchers do agree on the definition I quoted above. 6   «It is important to consider that lifelogging is typically carried out ambiently or passively without the lifelogger having to initiate anything. There have been a number of dedicated individuals who are willing to actively try to log the totality of their lives, but these are still in the very significant minority. (…) Therefore the process of lifelogging generates large volumes of data, much of it repetitive. Thus the contents of the lifelog are not just the deliberately posed photographs at the birthday party, but the lifelog also includes records of everything the individual has done, all day (and sometimes all night), including the mundane and habitual» (ibidem, p. 5).

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formation on the private lives of individuals gathered through various digital media and shared on social networks7. In 2009 a lifelogging manifesto was drafted by Gordon Bell, in collaboration with Jim Gemmell8. As a computer engineer at Microsoft Research, Bell started researching telepresence techniques and their potential developments in 1991. Gemmell joined the project in 1995 and in 1998 the two of them embarked on a new research project, to solve the difficulties that Bell had encountered in his attempt to digitalise and store all his writings. Bell soon realised the potential of a form of digitalisation not limited to papers, books, essays and odd pieces of writing, but encompassing any content related to one’s life: «imagine a complete digital record of your life, a complete e-memory of your time on earth»9. The idea of Total Recall was born (this being the title of the manifesto published in 2009), which is to say the idea of digitally recording any content whatsoever related to an individual’s life, based on the principle «record everything, keep everything»10. This includes books written and read, receipts, phone calls, text messages, appointments and meetings (to be recorded via wearable cameras), emails, and even biometric and psycho-physical data. Clearly, a task of this sort required the development of a software capable of storing, cataloguing and reproducing the huge amount of data recorded. Bell and Gemmell thus launched the experiment “MyLifeBits” for Microsoft Research11, an experiment that is still ongoing and which consists in the creation of a system (essentially a digital database) inspired by the visionary ideas of Vannevar Bush, who in his 1945 essay As We May Think envisaged a machine – called memex, a sort of mechanical desk – capable of recording and storing all contents pertaining to an individual (images, books, articles, and so on)12. What we have is precisely Total Recall (TR) – just as in the “Black Mirror” episode. But what is its purpose? Why should we wish to create a sort

  Cf. http://trendwatching.com/tprends/LIFE_CACHING.htm (retrieved June 17, 2019).   G. Bell – J. Gemmell, Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Every­ thing, London, Penguin Books, 2009. 9   Ibidem, p. 6. 10   Ibidem, p. 28. 11   Cf. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/mylifebits/ (retrieved June 17, 2019). 12   Cf. V. Bush, As We May Think, «The Atlantic», July 1945 (https://www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/, retrieved June 17, 2019). Indeed, Bush’s concern were the problems caused by ‘information explosion’ and its problematic impact on the efforts of scientific community at the time. Memex was supposed to respond to those problems by facilitating information archiving, selecting and retrieving. 7

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of ‘virtual’ duplicate of our ‘real’ life? «Soon you will be able to record your entire life digitally – Bell writes – it’s possible, affordable, and beneficial». Bell and Gemmell give functional and practical reasons for this: «I hate to lose my memories. I want Total Recall»13. In other words, TR would constitute a digital and virtual complement to biological and material memory: «biological memory is subjective, patchy, emotion-tinged, ego-filtered, impressionistic, and mutable. Digital memory is objective, dispassionate, prosaic, and unforgivingly accurate»14. The idea, then, is that data are more reliable than human memories, insofar as they are objective: self-knowldege through numbers. In this respect, lifelogging falls within the broad field of the QS movement and the so-called «dataist» paradigm15. The purpose of e-memory is to make up for the natural deficiencies and incompleteness of biological memory: the digital storing of all contents and events pertaining to our existence will allow us in the future – even a far-off future – to recall useful information of the most diverse sort, which might help us in a range of situations. As stated in the subtitle of the manifesto, this is bound to increase and improve our productiveness. Ultimately, then, the purpose of lifelogging is self-improvement, which is to say the improvement of one’s performances and hence productiveness. 3.  Understanding Lifelogging Philosophically Lifelogging, like self-tracking practices in general, does not represent an absolutely new phenomenon in the history of mankind: some kind of media has always been used by individuals to track the memory of their lives (keeping diaries, scrapbooks, photo albums and so on). Therefore, (a certain) philosophical tradition can help us understand lifelogging critically: as a start-

  Bell – Gemmell, Total Recall, p. 24.   Ibidem, p. 55. 15   As I noted above (see footnote 4), lifelogging cannot be reduced to a QS technique, but it is rather a form of it, i.e. a form of “(self)knowledge through number”: in this respect, the problems arising from lifelogging practices are similar to those characterizing QS activities. In 2014 Symantec, the worldwide Mountain View-based company producing cyber security softwares, published an in-depth dossier entitled How Safe Is Your Quantified Self? (ed. by M.B. Barcena – C. Wueest – H. Lau). Setting out from the observation that «fueled by technological advances and social factors, the quantified self movement has experienced rapid growth», the dossier highlighted the risks of self-tracking practices (identity theft, profiling, locating of user or stalking, embarrassment and extortion, corporate use and misuse). Cf. http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/ how-safe-is-yourquantified-self.pdf (retrieved June 19, 2019). 13 14

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ing point I will refer to Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the virtual. Let us consider Deleuze’s thesis in Difference and Repetition: We opposed the virtual and the real: although it could not have been more precise before now, this terminology must be corrected. The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual. Exactly what Proust said of states of resonance must be said of the virtual: “Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract”; and symbolic without being fictional. (…) The reality of the virtual consists of the differential elements along with singular points which correspond to them. The reality of the virtual is structure (…) far from being undetermined, the virtual is completely determined16.

Deleuze’s intuition has proven all the more true today, as not only the concept of virtual reality has become well-established, but also – with a further distinction – that of augmented reality. Both concepts are not opposed to everyday experience – as stated by Deleuze – and the latter especially represents a form of digital supplementation or integration of our everyday reality. Virtual Reality (VR) is all about the creation of a virtual world that users can interact with. This virtual world should be designed in such a way that users would find it difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is not: very well known examples of this are videogames, military simulations, and flight and vehicle simulations. Indeed, the first occurrence of the concept of VR dates back to 1938, when Antonin Artaud described the illusory nature of characters and objects at the theatre as «la réalité virtuelle» in a collection of essays, Le Théâtre et son double. The English translation of this book, published in 1958 as The Theatre and Its Double, offers the earliest published use of the term ‘virtual reality’. With Augmented Reality (AR), users continue to be in touch with the real world while interacting with virtual objects around them. AR aims at ‘augmenting’ our experience of the real world through a combination of various apps and softwares, typical examples of it being Google Glass, VRD (virtual retinal display) systems, GPS systems, and travelogs. Thus, neither VR nor AR is opposed to the real; but whereas the former is a (digital) simulation of the real, the latter is a (digital) integration of the real that allows interaction with it. AR in particular challenges the way we have always conceived reality and blurs the traditionally set boundaries through the increasing, digitally mediated integration of reality and virtuality.

  G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1968), trans. P. Patton, New York, Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 208-209. 16

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What are the consequences of these increasingly blurred boundaries between the virtual and the real for how we perceive and categorize ourselves as subjects? First, we might ask: is lifelogging to be considered a totally new phenomenon that we can only explain by referring to the practices of the quantified self movement within the context of digital culture, or may we consider it a development in the digital age of those practices that Michel Foucault called «technologies of the self»? Of course lifelogging, like practices of self-tracking in general, does not represent an absolutely new phenomenon in the history of mankind: media of some kind have always been used by individuals to track the memory of their lives (keeping diaries, scrapbooks, photo albums and so on). What is new here is the digitilization of media and their use in a highly integrated way; four conditions have changed in the present days, as Jack Schofield notes: First, new devices such as camera phones and digital recorders have made it much easier to record your life. Second, the use of digital media has allowed all the different types of record to be combined instead of stored separately. Third, the cost of disk storage has fallen to the point where many PC users can afford the terabyte or two of storage needed to keep everything. Finally, the internet has made it easy to share the results17.

Further developing Michel Foucault’s theory, I suggest that lifelogging represents a form of digital technology of the self. Let us consider Foucault’s definition of technologies of the self. These, he explains, are techniques (…) which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality18.

In this sense, they are practices of subjectification, i.e. of self-governance, by which the subject (re)produces and transforms herself as a subject. This is precisely what lifeloggers do, and in view of the same purpose. On the website of Moodlytics, one of the most famous lifelogging apps for tracking moods,   J. Schofield, How to Save Your Life, «The Guardian», August 19, 2004 (cf. goo.gl/ L5WwBl, retrieved June 19, 2019). 18   M. Foucault, Technologies of the Self, in L. H. Martin – H. Gutman – P. H. Hutton (ed. by), Technologies of the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault, London, Tavistock Publications, 1988, p. 18. 17

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the leading slogan is: «It is not an App, it is companion for happiness». If we navigate the “Dive me in” section, we read: The philosophy of Moodlytics lays emphasis on happiness. It says happiness comes from within. A happy day or even a happy life is nothing but an accumulation of smaller moments of life full of happiness. Moodlytics found its way with an ultimate goal to track all the positive moments and factors of life which keeps spreads happiness and perform a root cause analysis for the negative factors and people directly or indirectly having influence in our life19.

Happiness and purity are the ultimate goals, just as theorized by Foucault: this implies a deep change in the meaning of human practices and behaviour. As the ultimate goal of human beings, philosophy (from Socrates onwards) has traditionally concerned self-knowledge and the improvement of moral and intellectual abilities; lately, i.e. with the rise of biopolitics, the human body revealed itself as a field for the exercising of new forms of control, creating new goals for human activity. As Peter Sloterdijk has written in his 2009 book Du musst dein Leben ändern (You Must Change Your Life, 2013 English translation), the new feature characterizing the behaviour of contemporary human beings is exercise (Übung). It is time to reveal humans as the beings who result from repetition. Just as the nineteenth century stood cognitively under the sign of production and the twentieth under that of reflexivity, the future should present itself under the sign of the exercise. (…) From the start, nature and culture are linked by a broad middle ground of embodied practices – containing languages, rituals and technical skills, in so far as these factors constitute the universal forms of automatized artificialities. This intermediate zone forms a morphologically rich, variable and stable region that can, for the time being, be referred to sufficiently clearly with such conventional categories as education, etiquette, custom, habit formation, training and exercise20.

Gymnastic exercises, vegan diets and ideologies of hygiene, are typical – according to Sloterdijk – of (post)modern exercises21. Along with the development of their cultural forms and achievements, humans have always performed some kind of ‘exercise’ as a way to gain control on themselves, to modify and improve themselves: asceticism is a good example of this, but

  Cf. http://www.moodlytics.com (retrieved June 19, 2019).   P. Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life, Cambridge, UK, Polity, 2013, pp. 4 and 11. 21  Cf. ibidem, p. 63. 19 20

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we may also think of education in general as a form of such exercise. What is new in forms of digital exercise, such as lifelogging? 4.  What About Subjectification Processes? In order to answer this latter question, I will refer to the phenomenological paradigm. As an example, let us consider lifelogging apps and devices for tracking biometrics, i.e. for body measurements. In such practices, the living body, or living subject, is equipped with a digital device (e.g. a smartphone, a wearable device such as a camera, a tablet, and so on) which, through an application especially designed for tracking a given activity (e.g. the number of calories burned during training), isolates and gathers the data concerning a physical performance of the living subject – data purely related to his/her physical body (what Edmund Husserl called Körper and distinguished from Leib, which is the living body, the body that consciously experiences the world). The data thus collected are then processed and translated into an algorithmic code in an automatic, environmental and passive way. In the transition through a digital medium (often described as a “Black Box” [BB] with a pre-programmed code that is independent of the user, who neither knows it nor understands its inner workings), a range of data is produced that are processed and ordered by the device. These data reduce the original subjective experience in a dataistic, which is to say algorithmic, sense: the outcome, for the user, is the visualization of numbers, diagrams, charts, etc. translating her original experience into measurements. As an example, we can consider a case taken from the official Quantified Self (QS) website, in which we see the visualization of an experiment made by Jakob Eg Larsen, which is described as follows: «[Larsen] has tracked his sleep and resting heart rate (RHR) for the past four years. His 7 minute talk is far better watched than read about: it’s a great illustration of data validation, longitudinal tracking, and data assisted self-awareness»22. With the help of the digital medium, the originally embodied self indirectly produces – through the Black Box – a disembodied, objective and algorithmic self. The doubling of the real experience into the digital one means an enhancement of (self)knowledge as well as a certain loss of the meaning of the lived experience.

  Cf. https://quantifiedself.com/blog/qs17-highlight-jakob-eg-larsen-tracking-sleep-resting-heart-rate/ (retrieved June 24, 2019). 22

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The objectified ‘I’ resulting from the transition through the BB is not directly produced by the embodied subject: it is the digital medium which automatically brings about the translation. Therefore, two interpretations are carried out in this process: 1) the first ‘interpretation’ (which is rather a data processing) is made by the pre-programmed digital medium, which processes the raw data collected at the level of the embodied experience, translates them into algorithmic codes, and reproduces them as graphic displays of various sorts (reduction of the Leib to the Körper); 2) the second interpretation is made ‘ex-post’ by the subject who, as Leib, reactivates himself/herself at the end of the process and interprets his/her own digital objectification in view of self-optimization. This double objectification and double interpretation is typical of digital media and complicates the subjectification process in several respects, giving birth to various problems: –– The problem of the dualism between the living, experiencing body and the physical body. Every media technology implies a doubling, which here is further complicated, however, by the anonymous automatism of the device. The subject becomes alienated through the device, without which no algorithmic and objective translation of the original experience would be possible. The subject does not have (nor needs to have) any awareness of this first objectification/interpretation, which is automatically produced by the device: the process occurs entirely within the BB. The subject only activates the device and visualizes and interprets ex-post data which have been pre-processed for her according to the programmers’ pre-established criteria. This mode of functioning corresponds to the input-processing-output pattern used in software engineering, a pattern which introduces – within subjective activity – a radically impersonal moment precisely in relation to the processing that is automatically carried out by the device23. –– Moreover, although lifelogging is practised privately – its possible sharing on social networks being only a secondary development – and

  For a critical understanding of this problem, cf. S. Whittaker et al., Socio-technical Lifelogging: Deriving Design Principles for a Future Proof Digital Past, «Human Computer Interaction», 27 (2012) 1-2; OI: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07370024.201 2.656071 (retrieved June 19, 2019). See also S. Selke (ed. by), Lifelogging. Digital Self-tracking and Lifelogging – Between Disruptive Technology and Cultural Transformation, Wiesbaden, Springer, 2016. 23

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for the sake of self-improvement, the value of each experience as an event or as a unique, personal, unrepeatable and non-objectifiable life experience is largely lost. Data analysis (i.e., ‘self-knowledge through numbers’) can never tell me what “it feels like to be me”, what it feels like (i.e. “what it is like”) to perform a certain activity and have a certain experience. What is relevant is not the event but the protocol, because it alone is objective. Ultimately, individual experience undergoes a peculiar process of idealization: living experience is translated into average, maximum and minimum values, into trends, recursiveness, etc. All this re-establishes the dualism between a subjective ‘I’ and an objective ‘me’ which phenomenology had sought to overcome (with Husserl’s notion of Leib as much as Merleau-Ponty’s one of Flesh). –– The problem of computerised design and its influence on the subjectification process24. Someone, another individual (a computer engineer or a team of computer engineers) has programmed the digital medium. The person using the medium must use it correctly (i.e. according to the purpose it was designed for, as is the case with all media); hence, users must conform to the figure of the imaginary user who is posited by the designers at the programming stage. In the case of digital media, the influence of the designer is far more invasive and problematic: the user’s ex-post interpretation of the data collected crucially depends on the way in which such data are arranged and retrieved (i.e. visualized) – which is to say, on what meaningful criteria are adopted. The way in which others program the device, then, crucially affects the user’s interpretation of data pertaining to her activity, and hence her self-perception and self-understanding. Obviously, this makes lifeloggers’ aspiration to emancipation and the personal management of their performances far more problematic. Whereas lifeloggers see their activity as a technique for self-improvement and for the attainment of more objective, and hence more authentic, self-knowledge, in actual fact this activity meets a meta-goal that essentially amounts to the widespread profiling of individuals, in keeping with marketing logic. –– The problem of social sharing. The difficulty that already Foucault had to face was to show how the technologies of the self, which are 24   Cf. M. Dietrich – K. van Laerhoven, Reflect Yourself! Opportunities and Limits of Wearable Activity Recognition for Self-tracking, in Selke (ed. by), Lifelogging. Digital Selftracking and Lifelogging, pp. 213-234.

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eminently individual, can gain access to a community dimension. All the examples taken into account by Foucault – from the custom of keeping a diary in the Ancient world, through Tertullian’s publicatio sui to ascetic practices in early Christianity – are practices we could define, with Thomas Macho, as Techniken der Eimsamkeit – “techniques of solitude”25. Diaries were kept private, and ascetism was practised outside the community: the subjects performing these acts are not seen by anybody; subjectification succeeds as an individual exercise. Since lifelogging activities are not carried out in an exclusively passive way and they also include the act of logging, i.e. the online sharing of the data gathered, they also imply some kind of activity, i.e. they do not represent only a kind of Einsamkeittechniken but a range of participated actions and practices. The question here is: have the development of technology and the spread of lifelogging techniques in our everyday life turned the individual exercise of subjectification into a social one? Is the Internet community, the panoptical ‘eye of the other’, a mode of mutual subjectification? We must pay attention to two slightly different meanings of ‘sharing’ in this context: (i) providing feedbacks and commentaries about the information shared; (ii) replaying/performing again the same performance/exercise. In the first case, the act of sharing does not involve the form of life but only its (already) processed results; in the second case, the act of sharing does involve the form of life by performing the same exercise/technology of the self (lifelogging). If we accept Foucault’s definition of subjectification as a technique of self-governance aimed at the transformation of the self, then only the second way of sharing would authentically be subjectivating. This is the reason why the theorists and supporters of lifelogging wish for this practice to be extended, sooner or later, to the Internet community as a whole. From this perspective, however, difficult questions arise, which I cannot address within the limits of this contribution: what about privacy concerns? What part of my lifelogging activity violates another person’s privacy? What role would the government play? And how about accuracy and fairness? Am I allowed to delete memories or information that I think are not significant? When information is significant and who decides that it is26? 25   Cf. Th. Macho, Das zeremonielle Tier. Rituale – Feste – Zeiten zwischen den Zeiten, Wien – Graz – Köln, Styria-Pichler, 2004. 26   On these issues, and especially on privacy concerns, cf. A. Cavoukian, Privacy by Design: The 7 Foundational Principles. Implementation and Mapping of Fair Information

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5. Epilogue The philosophical understanding and critique of lifelogging and of its effects on the subjectification processes ought to have shown the intrinsically paradoxical quality of this process, which may be summed up in the three problematic aspects described above. However, in highlighting the problematic nature of lifelogging, my wish is not that to espouse a negative view of a complex phenomenon that is shaping the technologically advanced societies of today in an increasingly pervasive and irreversible way. Rather, I have sought to outline a possible framework for a “philosophical” critique and management of the phenomenon, to be further developed in future studies, in the hope that it may contribute to foster an awareness of certain practices among users and hence help limit the alienating effects in terms of self-understanding and the construction of self. Federica Buongiorno TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

Practices, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, 2010; W. C. Cheng et al., Total Recall: Are Privacy Changes Inevitable?, «Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences, CARPE’04», New York, 2004; K. O’Hara – M. M. Tuffield – N. Shadbolt, Lifelogging: Privacy and Empowerment with Memories for Life, «Identity and Information Society», 1 (2008); R. Rawassizadeh, Towards Sharing Life-log Information with Society, «Behaviour&Information Society», Special Issue: Knowledge Sharing, 31 (2012) 12.

DIGITAL WORLD, LIFEWORLD, AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF CORPOREALITY

1.  Introduction The contemporary world is characterised by the pervasive presence of digital technologies that play a part in almost every aspect of our life. An urgent and much-debated issue consists in evaluating the effects of these technologies. What are their repercussions on our human condition? How do they influence the process of construction of one’s own identity over time? How do they modify our societies and the way human beings communicate and relate to each other in various domains of their life? Such kinds of questions are tackled by various disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, at both the individual and societal level. In these inquiries, we can find both pessimistic and optimistic evaluations of the impact of digital technologies on human life. For instance, S. Turkle, who is one of the leading researchers of human-technology interaction, has expressed, in the nineties, an optimistic evaluation of the liberating social possibilities of some social networking technologies1. However, more recently she has changed her view, expressing concern in relation to new forms of internet sociality that are leading to a widespread state of loneliness in connectedness2. A similar concern is expressed in a much-debated study by J. Twenge and collaborators3. They argue that the combination of smartphones and social media in recent years is causing a decrease in psycho1   S. Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995. 2   S. Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, New York, Basic Books, 2011. 3   J. M. Twenge – G. N. Martin – W. K. Campbell, Decreases in Psychological Well-being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology, «Emotion», 18 (2018), pp. 765-780.

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logical well-being and an increase in states of depression and anxiety amongst young people. However, these studies are contrasted by other researches that emphasize the positive and emancipatory aspects of certain technologies. For instance, one could argue that the same technologies allow people to access information that in the past was reserved to the few and that they allow previously marginalized people and groups to express themselves online and to gather together for pursuing common objectives in the real world. In this paper, I shall argue that phenomenology can offer a contribution to our understanding of the implications of digital technologies. It can do so in the light of its analysis of the essential structures of human experience, and especially of its corporeal grounding. In the light of this analysis, it is possible to investigate the ways in which these essential structures are affected by digital technologies. The paper is divided into three sections. In § 2, I shall highlight the role of a certain disembodied or simply superficially embodied concept of mind in the rise of the digital age. In § 3, I shall focus on the phenomenological analysis of corporeality and on the thesis of the corporeal grounding of the mind. Drawing on this analysis, in § 4, I shall point out the possibility of evaluating the implications of each specific technology by looking at how it modifies the original form of human experience in its essentially embodied character. In this way, I would like to highlight the fact that some digital technologies involve a process of disembodiment or simply a superficial embodiment, thus pointing out the need to carefully evaluate the repercussions of the digitalisation of human experience. This is done without adopting a prejudicial pessimistic or optimistic stance concerning digital technologies, but with a view to keep them human being friendly. 2.  The Mind-Body Problem in the Digital Age The mind-body problem is a classic philosophical issue. It is the issue of the relationship between the mental and the corporeal dimensions of a human being. However, the different answers that are given to this problem are not confined to philosophical discussion. In fact, certain ways of understanding the relationship between mind and body can be found at play in human culture at large, in the intertwining between philosophy, science, religion and other cultural expressions, and in ways that inform the self-understanding of human beings. The phenomenological approach to the philosophy of technology leads us to investigate the reciprocal relationships that exist between technology and

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other dimensions of human culture with which it stands in a co-constitutive relation. In particular, we can look at the connection between the rise of digital technology in the 20th century and certain philosophical and scientific ideas that involve a specific way of understanding the relationship between mind and body. In fact, at the onset of computer science, the pioneering work of thinkers such as e.g. A. Turing, A. Newell, and H. Simon involved a reflection on the nature of mental processes. The functionalist metaphor of the mind as a software that can run on different kinds of hardware, with the associated thesis of multiple realizability, has been at the same time the source and the outcome of the development of digital technology. The Turing machine is an abstract model of computation but its concrete realization in the form of the computer reinforces the concept of mental functions as abstract processes that can be implemented by different material substrates. In this way, the rise of digital technology goes in tandem with an understanding of the mind as something that is relatively independent of the specificity of its material substrate. In this view, the specific corporeal constitution of a “thinking thing” is not essential for the definition of its mental states (as famously stated by H. Putnam, «we could be made of Swiss cheese and it wouldn’t matter»4). It can be thus said that the digital age has arisen under the banner of a disembodied concept of the mind or, better still, of a superficially embodied view, according to which the concrete constitution of the body is not essential for the definition of the mind5. 3.  Phenomenological Embodiment In the phenomenological perspective, we find a conception of corporeality as a constitutive condition of experience and, therefore, a radically embodied view of the mind. Such a view can be especially found in phenomenologists such as M. Merlau-Ponty, E. Levinas, and M. Henry, to name a few, but I would like to show that it is already present in the work of the founder of

4   H. Putnam, Philosophy and Our Mental Life, in Id., Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. II, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, pp. 291-303: 295. 5   This concept of the mind as disembodied is nowadays challenged by recent developments in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, with the rise of the «new embodied cognitive science» and the various approaches within the field of 4E cognition, which conceive of the mind as embodied, extended, enactive and embedded. This new paradigm is crucially linked to the phenomenological tradition (see e.g. F. J. Varela – E. Thompson – E. Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991).

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phenomenology. In fact, the mind-body problem is a difficult problem that also arises in the context of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, but Husserl offers a specific solution to it, by analysing the essential role of corporeality in the constitution of experience. On one hand, it could seem that transcendental phenomenology leads to a disembodied conception of subjectivity as a consequence of its alleged ‘intellectualism’, ‘Cartesianism’ and ‘idealism’. The phenomenological epoché constitutes a ‘Cartesian’ starting point of phenomenology, which ‘brackets’ the existence of the external world in order to investigate the conditions of possibility of experience. In the light of the phenomenological epoché and the phenomenological reduction, the existence of the external world becomes enigmatic (the «riddle» of transcendence6) and the possibility that the phenomenologist who develops this inquiry is, in fact, a solus ipse cannot be easily dismissed. On the other hand, however, the methodological epoché is just the starting point of an inquiry whose development can be seen, on the contrary, in terms of a philosophical ‘achievement’ of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). An investigation that, in the end, leads to corporeality as a constitutive condition of experience. This fundamental outcome of the phenomenological inquiry is contained in the analysis of experience in the terms of an intertwining of intentional form (morphè) and sensory matter (hyle). In fact, the hyle is the sensory component of consciousness that originates from the sentient body, i.e. the living and lived body (Leib). In order to motivate this claim, it is useful to look at the phenomenological analysis of experience in the light of the contemporary debate on the ‘hard problem’ in philosophy of mind7. The hard problem is that of understanding why and how there is «something it is like»8 to have a certain mental state. This problem is essentially distinct from the ‘easy’ problems, which consist in the investigation of cognitive systems in terms of functions that mediate between environmental input and behavioural output. According to this approach, it is possible to account for the intentionality of the mind by investigating the causal roles of certain functional states within a cognitive system without, however, touching the hard problem of consciousness. In contrast to the clear separation between hard and easy problems, a different approach, which is crucially inspired by the phenomenological per  E. Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology. A Translation of ‘Die Idee der Phänomenologie’, Husserliana II, Dordrecht, Springer, p. 17. 7   D. J. Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, «Journal of Consciousness Studies», 2 (1995) 3, pp. 200-219. 8   Th. Nagel, What is it Like to be a Bat, «Philosophical Review», 83 (1974) 4, pp. 435-450. 6

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spective, consists in denying that phenomenal consciousness and intentionality constitute two clearly separated aspects of the mind. This «inseparatism» is at the heart of the «phenomenal intentionality research program»9. The central claim of this view is that the intentionality of the mind, i.e. its directedness towards objects, is grounded on phenomenal consciousness and that, therefore, the fundamental form of intentionality is phenomenal intentionality10. This means that the phenomenal character of a mental state grounds its ability to be directed towards objects. However, at the heart of the phenomenal intentionality theory, we can find again the mind-body problem, which arises when considering the issue of scepticism concerning the existence of the external world. In fact, the theorists of phenomenal intentionality assume a radically internalist perspective, claiming that the phenomenal content of mental states is «narrow». They do so by referring to internalist scenarios such as the possibility of a «brain in a vat», a «disembodied Cartesian mind»11 or a «space soul»12. These scenarios, however, give rise to the issue of scepticism: given that the directedness of mental states towards alleged ‘external’ objects is grounded on ‘internal’ phenomenal contents, what guarantees us that, in fact, one is not a «brain in a vat» or a disembodied ‘solus ipse’? In my view, a way out of this issue can be found in the phenomenological development of the internalist standpoint. In fact, the thesis of the «phenomenal grounding of intentionality»13 is close to the phenomenological concept of the essential intertwining between intentional form and sensory matter in the constitution of every experience. However, contrary to the possible sceptical outcome of the phenomenal intentionality theory, the phenomenological view leads us to understand the phenomenal grounding of intentionality in terms of its corporeal grounding, confirming the essential rootedness of intentional mental states on the being of the sentient body.

9   U. Kriegel, The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program, in Id. (ed. by), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. 10   See e.g. T. Horgan – J. Tienson, The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality, in D. J. Chalmers (ed. by), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 520-533; B. Loar, Phenomenal Intentionality as the Basis of Mental Content, in M. Hahn – B. Ramberg (ed. by), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, pp. 229-258. 11   Horgan – Tienson, The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality, p. 254. 12   U. Kriegel, Intentional inexistence and phenomenal intentionality, «Philosophical Perspectives», 21 (2007) 1, pp. 307-340: 321. 13   See Kriegel, The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program, pp. 5 ff.

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In particular, this becomes clear within the ‘genetic’ development of transcendental phenomenology, which investigates the deep temporal structure of experience. The definition of this inquiry is outlined already in Ideas I, where Husserl claims that «the transcendentally ‘absolute’ which we have brought about by the reductions is, in truth, not what is ultimate; it is something which constitutes itself in a certain profound and completely peculiar sense of its own and which has its primal source in what is ultimately and truly absolute»14. This means that the ‘absolute’ field of transcendental consciousness has a deep temporal constitution which, in the end, takes place in the life of a concrete embodied subject. In fact, according to the phenomenological analysis of time-consciousness, the field of consciousness has a constant threefold structure of impression-retention-protention, which is the structure of its pre-reflective self-manifestation15. At the heart of the field of consciousness, there is the primal impression (Urimpression), which takes place in the self-affection of the living body. The analysis of the body as a constitutive condition of experience is developed throughout Husserl’s work. In Ideas II, Husserl investigates the essential role of the body in the constitution of the objects of experience, distinguishing between those sensations that are relative to the sensible properties of constituted objects (sensations of features, such as the sensation of redness in perceiving a red object) and the kinaesthetic sensations, through which one feels the positions and the movement of various parts of the body (eyes, head, etc.). The kinaesthetic sensations motivate the course of perception, e.g. in moving around an object in order to perceive its various sides. Both the ‘kinaesthetic sensations’ and the ‘sensations of features’ are aspects of the sensory dimension of conscious experience, which is constitutively grounded on the being of corporeality. As a consequence, the distinction between a merely ‘functional’ and a ‘sensory’ dimension of the body turns out to be an abstraction. The functional dimension of the body (the body that moves around the objects in the environment) is made possible by the sentient character of the living body. Only an abstract consideration could understand the information that comes from the various parts of the body in the terms of mere information with no sensory component (i.e. no ‘what-it’s-likeness’), such as the informa-

  E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, The Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1983, p. 163. 15   D. Zahavi, Inner (Time-)Consciousness, in D. Lohmar – I. Yamaguchi (ed. by), On Time – New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Dordrecht, Springer, 2010, pp. 319-339: 334-335. 14

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tion that would be used by an artificial agent in order to perceive and act (or that would be used by a «phenomenal zombie», in Chalmers’ famous thought experiment). Concretely, kinaesthetic information has a sensory nature, i.e. it is a form of phenomenal consciousness. It is because there is ‘something it is like’ to feel one’s body that one can perceive the environment. Therefore, in the phenomenological analysis of corporeality, we find the acknowledgement of a central role of the sentient dimension of the body, i.e. the body as the locus of phenomenal consciousness, which feels itself and the surrounding environment. As argued by R. Bernet, in Husserl’s analysis of the body we find a «phenomenology of the flesh»16, which is focused on the Leib as «intimate flesh feeling itself in a sensible self-affection»17. This «pre-reflectively lived body»18 is the locus of the self-manifestation of subjectivity and the locus of the manifestation of the world. When analysing those sensations of contact (Empfindnisse) that are at the basis of our openness to the world, Husserl highlights the fact that the Leib is at the same time sentient and sensible19. In the case of the two hands that grasp each other, each hand is at the same time touching and touched20. The self-affection of the flesh is the primordial experience in which subjectivity opens up to alterity, in a «non-coincidence of the flesh with itself» that is «the condition of openness to the world»21. The phenomenological analysis of corporeality, therefore, leads to the thesis of the radical embodiment of subjectivity. In terms of the phenomenological mereology, this is the claim that there is a relation of grounding (Fundierung) of the mind on the living and lived body22.

  R. Bernet, The Body as a ‘Legitimate Naturalization of Consciousness’, «Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement», 72 (2013), pp. 43-65, p. 64. 17   Ibidem, p. 47. 18   See E. Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2010, pp. 248-251. 19   See Bernet, The Body as a ‘Legitimate Naturalization of Consciousness’, p. 53. 20   E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989, pp. 152ff. 21   Bernet, The Body as a ‘Legitimate Naturalization of Consciousness’, p. 53. These analyses deeply influenced Merleau-Ponty, who draws on them when developing his phenomenology of corporeality and his ontology of the flesh (M. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1968). 22   When investigating the relationship between the different sciences that pertain to different «ontological regions», Husserl claims that «‘material thing’ and ‘psyche’ are different regions of being, and yet the latter is founded on the former; and out of that fact arises the fact that psychology is founded on somatology» (Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book, p. 32) 16

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4.  Experience and Corporeality in the Digital Age At this point, we can draw on the phenomenological analysis of the bodily roots of experience when investigating how the primordial experience of the living and lived body is affected by those digital technologies that are widely used in the contemporary world. In fact, most of the human beings in contemporary societies are constantly using various digital technologies, which are becoming increasingly integrated into one’s body and environment and are used in almost every aspect of one’s life (from personal computers to e.g. smartphones and digital tracking devices). In general, we can say that these technologies involve a process of digitalization of various dimensions of human experience (sociality, communication, work, leisure time, physical activity, etc.), which means that these domains of existence are more and more mediated by digital technologies. The pressing question is therefore to understand the implications of this process of digitalisation of human experience. In particular, we can focus our inquiry onto the modifications of bodily experience in the digital world. In fact, in the light of the phenomenological analysis of corporeality, it is possible to highlight the ways in which certain technologies lead to a process of ‘disembodiment’ of human experience or, in any case, a merely superficial embodiment, which involves corporeality in an impoverished form. This issue is nowadays tackled by various disciplines that are concerned with the repercussions of digital technologies on human experience at both the individual and the societal level. These disciplines can be informed by the phenomenological investigation of subjectivity in developing their theoretical and empirical analyses of the impact of digital technologies. Concerning the modification of bodily experience by means of digital technologies, it should be noticed that even tools such as haptic devices and visors for virtual and augmented reality, which try to involve more and more the body in its entirety, cannot really equate and replace the richness of fully embodied experience in the lifeworld. For instance, these technologies tend to involve just some privileged senses (sight, hearing, touch) and in a way that is, nevertheless, partial. This point is highlighted by R. Farrow and I. Iacovides23, who stress the fact that there are certain proprioceptive aspects of our embodied sensory experience that «could never conceivably be reproduced within digital environments as we know them: gravity, heat, etc.»24. 23   R. Farrow – I. Iacovides, Gaming and the Limits of Digital Embodiment, «Philosophy & Technology», 27 (2014) 2, pp. 221-233. 24   Ibidem, p. 230.

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Furthermore, Farrow and Iacovides highlight the difference between our primordial form of embodiment and the kind of embodiment that is made possible by digital avatars, referring in particular to online games25. By taking into account the phenomenological analysis of corporeality, especially in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, they argue that the idea of a «total immersion» in digital worlds «is simply fantasy»26. Even the newest control and mimetic interfaces, which track one’s bodily movements and simulate them into the digital environment, are not able to generate a feeling of total immersion in the digital environment. This is also because certain features of our ‘being-inthe-world’ cannot be adequately recreated within the digital environments. In order to develop the latter point, we can highlight the specific features of the objects that populate the digital environment. In fact, digital technologies involve the interaction with various kinds of «digital beings»27, which are units of digital information (i.e. series of binary digits) that populate the digital world (e.g. digital texts created with a word processor, digital images, music files, avatars in an online game or multi-user dungeon, etc.). As argued by J. Kim28, these objects have specific ontological features that distinguish them from all the other things with which we interact in ordinary life. On one hand, digital beings have certain thing-like features, such as durability, substantiality and extension, which make them a new kind of thing. Kim makes the example of virtual billiard balls in a virtual pool game. These objects can keep their identity over time and one can interact with them under various circumstances. They can also exist for themselves, and not just as signs that represent something else, therefore having a «quasi-bodily presence»29. Furthermore, digital beings can be used as tools in order to achieve certain objectives. On the other hand, digital beings lack some essential features of ordinary material things. In particular, they do not belong in objective time and space, since they can be at different locations at the same time and can be perfectly duplicated30. In fact, digital beings simultaneously admit two contradictory possibilities: eternal endurance and instant vanishing. They can «either endure forever without any change or disappear instantly without leaving a trace»31.

  Ibidem, p. 227.   Ibidem, p. 221. 27   J. Kim, Phenomenology of Digital-Being, «Human Studies», 24 (2001), pp. 87-111. 28   Ibidem. 29   Ibidem, p. 94. 30   Ibidem, p. 99. 31   Ibidem, p. 100. 25 26

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From the phenomenological perspective, it is significant to reflect upon the way in which these peculiar features of digital beings influence our relationship with them, which is different from the way in which we relate to ordinary material things. In fact, ordinary things cannot last forever but they also cannot instantly vanish32. These peculiar features of digital beings concern their materiality, which is merely virtual and therefore radically different from the materiality of ordinary physical things and of the living body. In fact, like every material thing, the living body cannot endure forever and cannot vanish instantly. Whereas digital beings do not have spatiotemporal constraints, material things and, amongst them, the living body, are essentially characterized by their spatiotemporal limits. Therefore, when dealing with digital beings we are constantly confronted with their paradoxical nature and, by contrast, with the limits of the material world, whose horizon of meaning is constitutively delineated by spatiotemporal boundaries. Concerning this point, we can observe that the history of technology is the continuous attempt to overcome the limits of human corporeality and the digital age is the culmination of this process. In particular, an extremely disembodied way of thinking about subjectivity is enclosed in the idea that one day we could be able to ‘upload’ the mind into another physical substrate, be it a computer or a totally artificial body33. However, in the light of the phenomenological analysis of corporeality, we can say that this idea is based on an abstract concept of the mind that ignores its corporeal grounding. If the phenomenological thesis of the corporeal grounding of experience is correct, then the idea of transferring one’s mind in another physical support would be a material counter-sense (analogous to the concept of a color without extension or a timbre without duration). However, even if we can theoretically exclude such a possibility, the idea that is behind it, i.e. the idea of the inessentiality of the body for the constitution of experience, can exert a powerful effect on the collective imagination of human beings in the digital age. However, there is another and more pervasive way of understanding the relationship between corporeality and technology. This is the approach that conceives of technology as a way of enriching our experience of embodied subjects in the ordinary world. In fact, concerning many digital technologies

  Of course, a material thing can be totally destroyed, but this usually requires a physical process that involves time and energy, whereas a digital being can be immediately destroyed with not much effort (e.g. by just pressing a button). 33   If such a procedure were possible, the ‘mind’ that would be uploaded would become a digital being itself, with the previously highlighted ontological features and in particular with the possibility of eternal endurance and of instant vanishing. 32

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that are widely used nowadays, the digital world is not another realm that is separated from the ordinary world. On the contrary, the digital domain is intertwined with the concrete world of our ordinary experience. Concerning these technologies, it is important to investigate the repercussions that they have on human experience considering, in particular, its corporeal and intersubjective dimensions. Various studies, for example, have focused on the implications of social networking platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that have a pervasive presence in the life of human beings in the digital age. This issue has been tackled by phenomenological thinkers. A. Borgmann34 and H. Dreyfus35 developed a detailed criticism of technologies such as chat rooms, emails, newsgroups, and online gaming platforms, which are the precursors of social networking media. Borgmann highlights the difference between those features of human relationships in the lifeworld that are based on the interaction between fully embodied human beings and the construction of one’s identity online, which is disembodied and abstracted from immersion in the lifeworld. In a similar vein, Dreyfus argues that these digital media suspend one’s fully embodied presence in the real world, constituting an impoverished substitute of ordinary life. However, Borgmann and Dreyfus had in mind some technologies that allow one to construct an anonymous or fictitious identity online and they did not foresee the way in which social networking platforms are nowadays used by people in order to give an online presence to their real-world identities36. Notwithstanding the fact that new social media technologies are more related to the ordinary world, as opposed to merely digital worlds, it is nevertheless important to reflect upon the repercussions that they have on human experience. For example, Lopato37 argues that the cultivation of intersubjective relationships through social media significantly differs from its embodied counterpart in the real world. Drawing on Sartre’s phenomenological analysis of in-person communication, Lopato argues that online communication inhibits our ability to effectively communicate with others and, for this reason, it cannot be ‘fulfilling’. This is because, as claimed by Sartre, in-person communication always involves the

34   A. Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1992; Id., Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millenium, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999. 35   H. Dreyfus, On the Internet, New York, Routledge, 2001. 36   S. Vallor, Social Networking and Ethics, «Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy», 2015, pp. 1-47: 9. 37   M. S. Lopato, Social Media, Love, and Sartre’ s Look of the Other: Why Online Communication Is Not Fulfilling, «Philosophy & Technology», 29 (2016) 3, pp. 195-210.

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perception of the «look of the other», i.e. the perception of how one person is judged by the other. This is a fully embodied experience. On the contrary, Lopato observes that online communication through social media introduces radical modifications to in-person communication. In on-line encounters, the meeting between people is just based on a partial representation of the other, in contrast to her fully embodied presence. Therefore, the “look of the other” is directed to a partial representation of the other, which excludes many essential features of embodied communication that cannot be conveyed online. This introduces an irreducible gap in online communication, turning it into an insufficient substitute of in-person communication between embodied subjects in the lifeworld. 5.  Conclusion The digital age has arisen under the banner of a disembodied concept of subjectivity, which is based on the idea that the body is not essential for the constitution of the human mind. This disembodied concept of the mind comes into play in those digital technologies that imply a disembodiment or simply a superficial embodiment of our ordinary experience in the lifeworld. However, the phenomenological analysis of corporeality leads us to highlight the corporeal grounding of the mind and therefore the essentially embodied character of human experience in all of its dimensions. This analysis can serve as the basis for the careful evaluation of the repercussions of each digital technology. This analysis should not assume a preconceived pessimistic attitude concerning the impact of digital technologies on human experience. However, it can warn us against the risks of dehumanization that are incorporated in certain technologies, when they clash with the essential features of human experience and especially with its corporeal grounding. Pointing out the ways in which some digital technologies negatively affect human experience can thus lead to developing them in ways that keep them human being friendly. Andrea Pace Giannotta University of Florence, Italy – University of Graz, Austria [email protected]

HOW TO DO THINGS WITH RULES? HEIDEGGER, WITTGENSTEIN AND THE CASE OF ALGORITHMS*

1.  Introduction The purpose of this paper is to describe the constitution of human praxis as an iterative process, with reference both to Heidegger’s phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s late philosophy of language, so as to sketch out a theoretical framework which might shed light on some aspects of the digital sphere, and in particular on the meaning of algorithms1. I will argue that human praxis constitutes itself in and through a performative process of iteration, i.e. repetition, which involves – and this is the key point that I wish to address – the very impossibility of being grounded. This concept of groundlessness points to two pivotal features of human praxis: the first refers to the opacity as the «necessary contingency»2 of human situations, i.e. the impossibility of fully determining the context in which praxis is embedded; the second spells out to the spontaneity of human action, i.e. its unpredictability and openness. Through the description of human praxis as an ungrounded iterative pro-

* The present article is based on post-doctoral research funded by the Technical University of Dresden. 1   For a very useful and complete introduction to meaning and functions of algorithms, see Th. H. Cormen – Ch. E. Leiserson – R. L. Rivest – C. Stein, Introduction to Algorithms, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2009. For their centrality within the digital sphere, see, e.g. T. Gillespie, The relevance of Algorithms, in T. Gillespie – P. J. Boczkowski – K. A. Foot (ed. by), Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2012, pp. 167-193. 2   O. Marchart, Die politische Differenz. Zum Denken des politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2010, on the oxymoron ‘necessary contingency’ and the correspondent reformulation of the modal category of contingency see, in particular, pp. 75-80.

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cess, I wish to ask whether the proposed account of human praxis may offer some contrasting tools for problematizing the meaning of algorithms. In order to address this question, I will structure my contribution in three sections: a) My starting point is Heidegger’s phenomenology and, in particular, the ontological and phenomenological concept of Dasein. Herein, I will argue that the notion of Dasein points to a performative, i.e. iterative process, which involves the very impossibility of being grounded, and which therefore possesses two pivotal features: opacity and unpredictability. It is well known that opacity is a typical feature of algorithms3. However, it is an open question in what sense this opacity might differ from that of human Dasein as an iterative praxis, and in which way these differences can be addressed and taken into account. b) In the second section, I will examine Wittgenstein’s description of human praxis as a praxis of rule-following. Accordingly, I wish to claim that this very same praxis is an iterative one and is marked – as in the case of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein – by a constitutive sense of groundlessness, which means both the opacity of the context in which the praxis is embedded and the unpredictability of the human action. Even though it is widely known that algorithms are based on a ruleset designed to produce meaningful outputs4, it remains unclear whether one can understand this rule-following in the same way for humans, or whether there are two radically different modes of rule-following. c) In the third and final section, I wish to problematize, according to the theoretical framework I will sketch, both the opacity involved in algorithms and how they follow rules, so as to underline some contrasting features between the human praxis and that of algorithms. 2.  Heidegger’s Performative Concept of Dasein Heidegger’s phenomenological and ontological notion of Dasein involves first of all a critique of both the classic Aristotelian definition of the human

3   The opacity of algorithms and in particular their secrecy raises a number of issues whose consequences are economical, political and cultural. On this topic, see e.g. the contribution by F. Pasquale, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2015. 4   Consider for instance the following definition: «Algorithm is any well-defined computational procedure that takes some value, or set of values, as input and produces some value, or set of values, as output. An algorithm is thus a sequence of computational steps that transform the input into the output» (Cormen et. al. [eds.], Introduction to Algorithms, p. 5).

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being as zoon logon echon – the animal who has speech5 – and that of a human being conceived as a form of substantial subjectivity6. The main point is that the sense of being-human cannot be conceived by pointing to the properties, which belong to an entity. The question is therefore not what, but rather how and, hence, who is the human being. Accordingly, in contrast to the sense of being which appears in a theoretical assertion which determines the properties of an entity (for example, the theoretical proposition ‘the chair is yellow’)7, the sense of being entailed in the word Dasein «has to be expressed with the personal pronouns»8. This is not merely a grammatical question, since it rather points to the fact that the sense of ‘I am’, ‘you are’, ‘we are’, implies a constitutive reference to the context in which it is uttered and further expresses a way of being. This is a pivotal point for conceiving a practical and performative account of human Dasein9. The famous statement of Being and Time according to which the «essence of Dasein lies in its existence»10 spells out a shift from an account of the human being conceived as an entity possessing essential properties or abilities, to an account of our being in the world that is in each case (jeweils) a way of being, i.e. a possibility, and therefore is practically embedded in a shared context and involves an unavoidable particularity. As Heidegger writes: The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not ‘properties’ present-at-hand of some entity which ‘looks’ so and so (…); they are in each case possible ways for it to be (…)11. Each Dasein is its possibility and does not merely “have” it12.

5   Cf. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie – E. Robinson, Oxford, Blackwell, 1962, p. 74. 6   Ibidem, p. 73. 7   For a deep analysis of the dimension of truth of the theoretical assertion with reference both to Husserl and Aristotle see M. Heidegger, Logic. The Question of Truth, trans. Th. Sheehan, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2010, in particular pp. 27-166. For the difference between hermeneutic and apophantic discourse see also the locus classicus Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 32-33. 8   Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 68. 9   I have explored this performative account of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein in L. Guidi, Il rovescio del performativo. Studio sulla fenomenologia di Heidegger, Rome, Inschibboleth, 2016. 10   Ibidem, p. 67. 11   Ibidem, p. 68. 12   Ibidem, p. 67.

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Hence, all the existential features of Dasein embody practical ways of being13. For this reason, Dasein is a «concept of movement»14, since all the existential features of Dasein are not properties or determinations of a subject, who is present and real as a matter of fact, but rather are factical modes of being or enactment (Vollzugsweise). Thus, Dasein’s «facticity» (Faktizität) cannot be identified with the «reality» (Wirklichkeit) of an entity15. From this perspective, I would argue that Dasein does not correspond to any substantial subjectivity but rather embodies a performative process of subjectification. This means that we are not ‘subjects’, but become ourselves in the world with others by inheriting a totality of meanings and ways of acting, and furthermore by enacting them. This is what Heidegger in Being and Time spells out as «Dasein’s factical existing»16, i.e. as «thrown projection»17. Existing means enacting/projecting ways of being, i.e. possibilities, in which we find ourselves thrown, since they constitute our factical situation: we grow up in them. It means projecting the possibilities that we have inherited, thereby enacting them by acting. Hence, I would argue that the notion of Dasein points to an iterative process of constitution, the very same which Heidegger calls «temporalization»18. This process is an iterative one – to use Derrida’s concept19 – since it involves a process of repetition, or in Heidegger’s term, 13   Cf. E. Tugendhat, Self-consciousness and Self-determination, trans. P. Stern, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1986, pp. 168 ff. A similar pragmatic interpretation of the concept has been offered by T. Rentsch, Heidegger und Wittgenstein, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 2003, and H. L., Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” Division I, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991. 14   Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 224 (translation modified). The German expression – which in English has been translated as «kind of motion» – is Bewegungsbegriff, see M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Frankfurt a. M., Klostermann, 1977, p. 238. With this concept Heidegger refers in Being and Time to the movement of falling. Nonetheless, all existentials belong to the holistic motility of Dasein, and therefore should be understood as concepts of movement. See e.g. M. Heidegger, Ontology. Hermeneutic of facticity, trans. J. Van Buren, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1999, p. 51. 15  Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 174 (translation modified). 16   Ibidem, p. 236. 17   Ibidem, p. 265 (translation modified). 18  E.g. ibidem, p. 378. 19   Derrida has developed this concept in contrast to Austin’s account of performative utterance in order to underline that every sign «constitutes itself by virtue of its iterability, by the possibility of its being repeated in the absence not only of its “referent” (…) but in the absence of a determinate signified or of the intention of actual signification, as well as of all intention of present communication». Within this concept «a differential mark» constitutively belongs to the sign, which is «cut off from its putative “production” or “origin”» and therefore from its metaphysical presence. The iterability (or différance) belongs not only to

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of ‘projection’, which does not imply an original presence that gets repeated or projected. Hence, Dasein’s factical possibilities do not correspond to pre-constituted entities or options, which are present before their projection: «(p)rojecting has nothing to do with comporting oneself towards a plan that has been thought out (…). On the contrary, any Dasein has, as Dasein, already projected itself; and as long as it is, it is projecting»20. For this reason, the process of projection is marked by a constitutive ‘nullity’ or ‘différance’21, since Dasein exists and therefore constitutes itself in the very enactment or projection of factical possibilities. Hence, Dasein «is permeated with nullity through and through»22. From this perspective, I would argue that Dasein points to an iterative performative process of constitution and involves as its pivotal feature a peculiar sense of nullity, since both the totality of meanings and possibilities in which we are thrown (the world) as well as our action are constitutively ungrounded. This peculiar sense of groundlessness as nullity is the core of Heidegger’s conception of Dasein. This dimension has been spelled out by recalling that «as thrown the projection is not only determined by the nullity of being the ground but is itself as projection essentially null»23. Dasein is «as thrown projection, the (null) ground of a nullity»24. I would suggest to interpret the nullity and groundlessness of the notion of ‘thrown projection’ as a double movement. On the one hand, the context of meanings and possibilities in which we are thrown – the world – is not grounded on natural properties and principles given once and for all. Rather it is an inherited complex of ways of being and as such is ungrounded, since it is never fully transparent and determinate and entails a constitutive opacity as necessary contingency25. This means – on the other hand – that how we project this inherited complex of possibilities and ways of being, by enacting them and therefore acting, is ungrounded too, since it is never fixed and predictable but remains an unforeseeable and open task.

the constitution of a sign, but rather is extended «to all “experience” in general». J. Derrida, Signature, Event, Context, in Id., Limited Inc., trans. A. Bass, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, p. 10. 20  Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 185. 21   J. Derrida, La différance, in Id., Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1982. 22   Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 331. 23   Ibidem (translation modified). 24   Ibidem (translation modified). 25   Cf. Marchart, Die politische Differenz, p. 78.

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Hence, I would argue, according to Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, that the human praxis embodies an iterative performative process, which is constitutively ungrounded, since it implies both the opacity and contingency of the context in which the praxis is embedded, as well as the openness and unpredictability of human action. 3.  Wittgenstein on Rule-following In this second section, I will refer to Wittgenstein’s late philosophy of language. I will consider Wittgenstein’s description of human praxis as a shared praxis of rule-following, and I will argue that the latter is an iterative one, since it implies training and ‘constant repetition’ (without a present, determinate and ‘original’ starting point). The purpose of this second section is to underline that, according to Wittgenstein, rules do not correspond to independent and fixed instructions but rather exist only in the shared praxis of rule-following. This very same praxis is marked – as in the case of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein – by a constitutive sense of groundlessness. The latter spells out both the opacity of the context, i.e. the contingency of the inherited practices, as well as the unpredictability of human action. I would underline first of all that at the core of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations lies human language conceived as a shared praxis. At issue is therefore neither a theory of meaning nor a definition of the essence of language, but rather the description of the plural, countless and always particular ways in which human praxis is enacted. This is what Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘language-games’ points to: But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question and command? There are countless kinds; countless different kinds of use of all the things we call “signs”, “words”, “sentences”. And this diversity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten (…). The word “language-game” is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life26.

It is crucial to notice that the meaning of our words does not lie in the entities they denote. Our words are therefore not labels, which refer to prop-

  L. Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen: Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe – P. M. S. Hacker – J. Schulte, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, § 23. 26

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erties of external objects. Hence, we do not learn a language by learning ostensive definitions, but rather – in order to ask ‘how is it called?’ – we must have already learnt many other language-games, and mastered them27. Hence, learning a language «is not explanation but training»28, and further «to understand a language means to be master of a technique»29. The meaning of words – as Wittgenstein famously argues – lies therefore, «for a large classes of cases», in their «use in human language»30 practices. The notion of ‘language-game’ suggests that these very same practices are structured and constituted by rules. Hence, when we learn to use a word, what we actually learn is to react and behave correctly in a determinate context, and thereby to follow a rule31. In this training we become who we are and hence become acquainted with our form of life. Furthermore, it is crucial to underline that the rules of our language-games do not preexist as explicit, clear and fixed instructions before we actually play. Rather, Wittgenstein points to the very impossibility of separating the rules from their application, meaning: from our shared praxis. He writes: Following a rule is analogous to obeying an order. We are trained to do so; we react to an order in a particular way. But what if one person reacts in one way and another in another to the order and the training? Which one is right? (…). Shared human behaviour is the system of reference (…)32.

Hence, we do not distinguish between right and wrong uses/applications by means of a system of instructions or mental representations of the rule, but rather on the basis of the shared human behavior. Hence, human praxis constitutes itself by training, by learning to react correctly in a shared context, thereby learning and therefore inheriting and enacting sedimented practices,   Cf. S. Cavell, Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language, in A. Crary – R. Read (ed. by), The New Wittgenstein, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 21-37. 28   Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen: Philosophical Investigations, § 55. 29   Ibidem, § 199. 30   Ibidem, § 43. 31   On the problem of rule-following in Wittgenstein’s philosophy the literature is enormous. For an orientation and overview of the different positions as well as a complete bibliography, see M. Kusch, Rule-Following: Oxford Bibliographies. On line Research Guide, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011. Also, I would mention two very influential contributions which have araised a large debate among the scholars: S. A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rule and Private Language, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1982, and J. McDowell, Wittgenstein on Following a Rule, in A. Miller – C. Wright (ed. by), Rule-following and Meaning, Montreal, McGill Queens’s University Press, 1984, pp. 45-80. 32   Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen: Philosophical Investigations, § 206. 27

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or as Wittgenstein calls them «customs (usages, institutions)»33. Hence, «‘following a rule’ is a practice»34. I would argue that this praxis is an iterative one, since it involves training, «regularity»35, multiplicity of «variations»36 and «constant repetition»37: Is what we call ‘obeying a rule’ something that it would be possible for only one man to do, and to do only once in his life? – (…) It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which a report was made, an order given or understood; and so on. – To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (usages, institutions). To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to have mastered a technique38.

From this perspective, I would claim that Wittgenstein’s understanding of rules points to an iterative praxis of rule-following, since they do not correspond to a pre-determinate and available system of instructions as an ‘original’ starting point, which then get ‘repeated’ and applied. Rather, rules embody interwoven practices of rule-following which are «varied in a multiplicity of ways»39 and «come (…) about only through constant repetition. And there is no definite starting point for ‘constant repetition’»40. Hence, Wittgenstein contends precisely that rules correspond to mental or physical states or to a system of instructions which preexist before their applications. Four main points of this contending account of rules have been therefore criticized: 1) A system of instructions or mental representations of rules can never guarantee their correct applications, since this rather involves the necessity of a further rule, which prescribes the application of the rule, thereby leading to an infinite regress. As Wittgenstein asks: «Can (…) we imagine a rule regulating the application of a rule?»41. 2) Nor, however, can the gap between the in-

  Ibidem, § 199.   Ibidem, § 202. 35   Cf. ibidem, §§ 207, 208, 237. 36   L. Wittgenstein, Zettel, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford, Blackwell, 1967, § 568. 37   L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, Vol. II, trans. G. E. M. Ascombe, Oxford, Blackwell, 1983, § 626. 38   Ibidem, § 199. 39   Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 568. 40   Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, § 626. 41   Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen: Philosophical Investigations, § 84. 33 34

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struction and its application be filled by a causal explanation of the behavior. According to Wittgenstein’s example, I can know whether I am following a sign-post correctly, only on the basis of the institution or the sedimented praxis of «following a sign-post»42. A causal explanation of behavior may explain why I move (the cause), not whether or not I did it right (its ground)43. 3) A mental representation of the rules or a system of instructions may be able to completely determine the entire language-game. On the contrary, our language-game is never fully determined by rules, since it rather involves a constitutive opacity, which is precisely what we need in order to play. As Wittgenstein writes: (A language-game) is not everywhere circumscribed by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules too».44 (Further): «One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges. – ‘But is a blurred concept a concept at all?’ – Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture?45.

4) Moreover, if rules were mental states or clear instructions, they should fix in advance all their possible applications, thereby prescribing all their potential practical uses. Rather, Wittgenstein draws our attention to the very impossibility of doing this, since it is never possible to logically deduce a rule’s application from its instruction or expression. This means that our action is never predictable; rather it is always possible to act differently, thereby inventing other games or changing the rules of the games by playing46. As Wittgenstein writes: A rule stands there like a sign-post. – Does the sign-post leave no doubt open about the way I have to go? Does it show which direction I am to take when I have passed it; whether along the road or the footpath or cross-country? But where is it said which way I am to follow it; whether in the direction of its ringer or (e.g.) in the opposite one?47

  Ibidem, § 85.   See on this point K. Puhl, Regelfolgen, in E. von Savigny (ed. by), Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophische Untersuchungen, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1998, pp. 119-142: 107. 44   Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen: Philosophical Investigations, § 68. 45   Ibidem, § 71. 46   Cf. ibidem, § 83. 47   Ibidem, § 85. 42 43

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Hence, at the core of Wittgenstein’s conception of rules lies the iterative character of the practice of rule-following. This very same praxis, as in the case of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein, has as its pivotal feature the very impossibility of being grounded. Thus, the practices which we have inherited, our «usages, custom or institutions»48, are not a system of instructions or principles given once and for all, but rather build up what Wittgenstein also calls «our picture of the world»49. The latter is the ungrounded complex of the sedimented practices and beliefs on the background of which we distinguish between true and false. As Wittgenstein writes: I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false50. The difficulty is (precisely) to realize the groundlessness of our believing51.

This means that the customs and uses that we have inherited and on the background of which we become who we are by training, are marked by a «necessary contingency»52. Furthermore, as in the case of the notion of Dasein, this groundlessness does not only concern our picture of the world as the whirl complex of sedimented practices, but rather affects our action as well. Thus, our action is constitutively groundless too, and this means unpredictable and open. It is our groundless action that may transform our picture of the world, thereby changing the rules by playing. As Wittgenstein puts this pivotal point: And is there not also the case where we play and – make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them – as we go along53.

  Ibidem, § 199.   L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. G. E. M Anscombe – G. H. von Wright, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1975, § 94. 50   Ibidem. 51   Ibidem, § 166. 52   I have developed the relation between Marchart’s already quoted concept of ‘necessary contingency’ and Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in L. Guidi, Die Grundlosigkeit der Praxis in Wittgensteins Über Gewissheit. Kritik als Übung des Kontingenzbewusstseins, in A. Siegetsleitner – A. Oberprantacher – M.-L. Frick (ed. by), Crisis and Critique: Philosophical Analysis and Current Events, 42. Wittgenstein Symposium 2019, no. XXVII, vol. XXVII, Kirchberg, Die Österreichische Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft, 2019, pp. 86-90. 53  Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen: Philosophical Investigations, § 83. 48 49

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You must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable54. As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting55.

Therefore, I would argue that Wittgenstein’s account of human praxis as a shared praxis of rule-following involves an iterative performative process, since it implies training and ‘constant repetition’. Hence, according to Wittgenstein, rules do not correspond to pre-constituted, independent and fixed instructions, but rather exist only in their very constant repeated applications, i.e. in a shared (and sedimented) praxis of rule-following. This very same praxis is marked, as in the case of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, by a constitutive sense of groundlessness, i.e. by the opacity of the context – the contingency of the inherited practices – as well as by the unpredictability and openness of human action. 4.  The Opacity of Algorithms In this last section, I will try to critically apply this theoretical framework to those aspects of algorithmic procedures that could interact in contrast to the proposed philosophical understanding. The starting point for this contrasting analysis and comparison is Jenna Burrell’s 2016 article How the Machine ‘Thinks’: Understanding Opacity in Machine Learning Algorithms56. As she states at the beginning of her paper: Opacity seems to be at the very heart of new concerns about ‘algorithms’ among legal scholars and social scientists. The algorithms in question operate on data. Using this data as input, they produce an output; specifically, a classification (…). They are opaque in the sense that if one is a recipient of the output of the algorithm (the classification decision), rarely does one have any concrete sense of how or why a particular classification has been arrived at from inputs. Additionally, the inputs themselves may be entirely unknown or known only partially. The question naturally arises, what are the reasons for this state of not knowing? Is it because

  Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 559.   Ibidem, § 110. 56   J. Burrell, How the machine ‘thinks’: Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms, «Big Data & Society», 3 (2016) 1, pp. 1-12; https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715622512. 54 55

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the algorithm is proprietary? Because it is complex or highly technical? Or are there, perhaps, other reasons?57.

According to Burrell, there are three different forms of opacity: (1) opacity as intentional corporate or institutional self-protection and concealment and, along with it, the possibility for knowing deception; (2) opacity stemming from the current state of affairs where writing (and reading) code is a specialist skill; and (3) an opacity that stems from the mismatch between the mathematical optimization in high dimensionality characteristic of machine learning and the demands of human-scale reasoning and styles of semantic interpretation58.

Traditionally, algorithms were developed from the ‘top down’: a human programmer would identify a ruleset for taking an input and producing an output and would then code that into the computer using a computer language. Nowadays, more and more algorithms are developed from the ‘bottom up’: they are jump-started with a few inductive principles and rules and then trained to develop their own rulesets for taking an input and producing an output by exploring large datasets of sample inputs. These are machine learning algorithms and they are the main focus of Burrell’s article. Let’s consider the scheme proposed by Danaher:

  Ibidem, p. 1.   See ibidem, pp. 1-2.

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As Danaher summarizes: The opacity concern arises in the middle step of this diagram. For the most part, we know how the data that gets fed into the algorithm is produced: we produce it ourselves through our activities. We also typically know the outputs of the algorithm: we are either told (or can reasonably infer) how the algorithm has classified the data. What we don’t know is what’s going on in the middle (inside the ‘black box’ – to borrow Pasquale’s phrase). We don’t know which bits of data are selected by the algorithm and how it uses that data to generate the classifications59.

The problem is typical particularly for the second kind of opacity described by Burrell, the «illiterate opacity»60. This opacity concerns the user and not the algorithm designer. The latter needs to translate the human-language series of defined steps into a code. There is no obvious or unique way in which to translate from one language to the other. Algorithm designers need to exercise judgment, and this means that they do need to refer to criteria and values entailed in our shared praxis. Algorithmic systems are sometimes presented as being value-free, while they are anything but. Since judgment and discernment must be exercised in translating tasks into algorithms, the criteria and values selected affect their functioning, so that their very same criteria remain concealed to their users. However, the most interesting type of opacity is the third one («intrinsic opacity»61), since it is not caused by ignorance or deception but by a fundamental mismatch between how humans and algorithms ‘understand’ the world. This suggests that there is something intrinsic to the nature of algorithmic governance that makes it opaque. In the Big Data era, algorithms have to contend with «billions or trillions of data examples and thousands or tens of thousands of properties of the data»62. The ruleset they use to generate useful output alters as they train themselves by means of training data. The result is a system that may produce useful outputs (or seemingly useful outputs) but whose inner logic is not interpretable by humans. Humans don’t know exactly which rules the algorithm uses to produce its results. In other words, the inner logic is opaque. Philosophically addressed, with the help of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, this leads to the question: are algorithms also   J. Danaher, Three Types of Algorithmic Opacity, in Algogracy and the Transhumanist Project (March 5, 2016), last retrieved on August 15, 2019; https://algocracy.wordpress. com/2016/03/05/three-types-of-algorithmic-opacity/. 60   Ibidem. 61   Ibidem. 62  Burrell, How the machine ‘thinks’, p. 5. 59

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groundless for human beings, since we cannot (at least as users) access their inner logics? Also, we have here the very problem of rule-following: if we don’t know which ruleset algorithms follow to ‘produce their results’, while algorithms are based upon a pre-programmed ruleset, what does it mean for an algorithm to follow a rule? To be based on a ruleset? More radically: I would argue that the iterative processes in which algorithms consist, thereby performing instructions63, is not the same as the human praxis of ‘rule-following’. While in the human praxis of rule-following the criteria on the basis of which we distinguish between true and false uses of language is located inside the praxis, and can therefore be re-shaped and altered by acting, the algorithmic process cannot alter the criteria on the basis of which it is programmed unless the programmer (who is, again, a human being!) changes those criteria. Hence, the opacity entailed in the human praxis of rule-following is the condition of the possibility of spontaneous and creative action, and this means: of changing the rules by playing. Furthermore, the algorithmic set of instructions must be complete, clear and explicit and cannot entail any ambiguity. On the contrary, as has emerged in consideration of Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s accounts, the human projection of the inherited possibilities, as well as the applications of the rules in the human praxis of rule-following can never be prescribed clearly, completely and without ambiguity, since they represent as such an open and unpredictable task. Hence, I would claim that the instructions followed by algorithms in displaying their outputs are not the same rules that we follow in using them. In conclusion, I have offered some contrasting tools in order to problema­ tize the meaning of algorithms. Nonetheless, I do not intend to frame this reflection as a mere opposition ‘human vs. machine’. In all cases, algorithms require a human component, in terms of who gathers and interprets the data (and what biases they have), which design decisions are made and how are they implemented. From a philosophical point of view, all problems arise by considering the relationships between this human intervention (from the side both of the programming and the using activity) and the way in which algorithms work and ‘react’ or ‘respond’ to this activity, how they further

  For a detailed analysis of the process of iteration within algorithmic functions, see Cormen – Leiserson – Rivest – Stein, Introduction to Algorithms, pp. 15-40. For a critical assessment of the performative character of algorithms and their being embedded in complex socio-technical assemblages, see the contribution by R. Kitchin, Thinking Critically About and Researching Algorithms, «The Programmable City Working Paper 5», October 28, 2014. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2515786 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2515786. 63

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act retrospectively upon the human praxis as such, thereby affecting it64. It is precisely here – in this contrast inherent to the human-machine interaction – that a philosophical reflection can prove to be productive in the age of digital culture. Lucilla Guidi Stiftung Universität Hildesheim [email protected]

  On the retrospective effects of algorithms upon the human social praxis, a broad topic which leis beyond the purpose of this paper, see L. Ulbricht et al., Dimensionen von Big Data: Eine politikwissenschaftliche Systematisierung, in B. Kolany-Raiser – R. Heil – C. Orwat – Th. Hoeren (ed. by), Big Data und Gesellschaft. Eine multidisziplinäre Annäherung, Springer, Cham, 2018. See in particular the contribution by J.-P. Voß, Big Data als epistemische Innovation? Kulturell-kognitiv hergestellte Erwartungen durch Big Data, pp. 155-163. 64

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Subjectivity is – at first sight – grounded in an individual’s observation of and contemplation about the self. Under these premises self-observation seems to be sufficient for the formation of subjectivity, and self-observation techniques like life-logging or Quantified Self routines might confirm or alter the subject’s knowledge of itself1. The «schizophrenic situation»2 (König, 2011) of me as a subject observing myself as an object has been problematized by various authors. Immanuel Kant describes the recursive structure of subject constructions via self observation with the bonmot of «zweifaches Ich» (‘double I’) and warns us that the possibility to say ‘I’ to myself leads towards an infinity of home-made ideas and concepts. But what other methods would be available to find out about myself? Could it possibly be a successful strategy of finding out about the subjectivity 1   «Ich bin mir meiner selbst bewußt, ist ein Gedanke, der schon ein zweifaches Ich enthält, das Ich als Subject, und das Ich als Object. Wie es möglich sei, daß ich, der ich denke, mir selber ein Gegenstand (der Anschauung) sein, und so mich von mir selbst unterscheiden könne, ist schlechterdings unmöglich zu erklären, obwohl es ein unbezweifeltes Factum ist; es zeigt aber ein über alle Sinnenanschauung so weit erhabenes Vermögen an, daß es, als der Grund der Möglichkeit eines Verstandes, (…) dem wir das Vermögen, zu sich selbst Ich zu sagen, nicht Ursache haben beizulegen, zur Folge hat, und in eine Unendlichkeit von selbstgemachten Vorstellungen und Begriffen hinaussieht. Es wird dadurch aber nicht eine doppelte Persönlichkeit gemeint, sondern nur Ich, der ich denke und anschaue, ist die Person, das Ich aber des Objectes, was von mir angeschauet wird, ist gleich andern Gegenständen außer mir, die Sache» (I. Kant, Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte, die Metaphysik seit Leibnizens und Wolffs Zeiten in Deutschland gemacht hat? [1804], in Id., Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. XX, ed. by D. F. T. Rink, Berlin, Akademie Ausgabe, 1942, Bd. XX, 1942, p. 270). 2   See C. König, Subjektivität und Wahrheit. Eine Konfrontation von Fichte und Foucault. Fichtes (Re-)Konstruktion des Ich in der Wissenschaftslehre von 1804 und Foucaults Arbeit am Subjekt als methodische Provokation, Heidelberg, MA Dissertation, 2011.

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of mine by looking at the subjectivities of ourselves – in the plural – and to subscribe to a project of an ««anthropology of ourselves». Such was the project that Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings started in 1937 in the North of England. The massive multi-participant self-observation project that lasted for a few decades was named Mass Observation (MO) and was run by volunteers and supported by newspapers and the labour movement. The ‘observers’ and the ‘diarists’ were asked to carefully watch various aspects of everyday life and the behaviour of their fellow citizens and write down notes in their diaries.

Fig. 1: Tearoom in the city centre, a meeting of MO diarists and observers.

At present the archive in Sussex keeps 85 thematic collections that contain 3000 reports3. The topics range from eating habits, alcohol consumption and lodging circumstances to fashion, sports, love at the beach and media consumption. What Harrisson, Madge and Jennings intended to create was a «Science of Ourselves», or as Harrison put it, an «Anthropology of Ourselves». Harrison was obviously influenced by his self-taught anthropological

  Cf. http://www.massobs.org.uk/.

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activities that resulted in a popular book of the early forties: Living Among Cannibals4. The book was distributed by the Left Book Club and widely read amongst book club members. In April 1939 the club counted 57.000 members and spawned more than 1.000 reading groups. This was accomplished via strong support from the newspapers Daily Mirror and Left Review. One must take into account that the poet Charles Madge, later to become the first professor of sociology at Birmingham university, was a co-founder of mass observation and wrote regularly for the Left Review, a journal of the British section of Comintern. The MO network consisting of printed press support, reading groups and individual activists can in some regard be compared to the Quantified Self movement with its support of social media, meet-up groups and individual self-trackers. Both movements, MO and QS, are proud to be working with volunteers on a non-profit basis, both are considered to be keeping with the times and both movements are concerned with the self. Both movements promote the idea of «lively data»5. They differ, however, in the understanding of what the self is: an individual numeric self in our times and socially mediated ‘ourselves’ in the 1930s. Projects like QS and MO operate best when influencers and prominent personalities give credit to the undertaking. Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, the founders of the Quantified Self, movement, have street credit from editing and writing for the fashionable WIRED magazine. Filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, the co-founder of Mass Observation, was a good friend of André Breton and gained some reputation by that fact. With all conceded similarities of QS and MO programmes and structures there are clear differences that the two projects demonstrate: 1.  The assemblages of humans, tools and technologies, practices, ideas and discourses around MO and QS differ substantially. For Mass Observation books, diaries, film and photos were the main media. The technologies consisted of pen and paper, the typewriter and the printed press. Most of the discourses were oral and all of them pre-digital. QS, on the contrary, is based on digital technology, the discourses are disseminated via social media and have a much wider geographical outreach. Deborah Lupton describes the QS assemblage as the «human-body-device-sensor-­software-

  T. Harrisson, Living Among Cannibals, London, George G. Harrap & Co., 1948.   Cf. D. Beer – R. Burrows, Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data, «Theory, Culture & Society», 30 (2013) 4, pp. 47-71. 4 5

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data configuration»6. Building upon this formula, I propose that the MO assemblage is a society-individual-body-notation-text configuration. 2.  Granted the voluntary nature of participating in the observations and the absence of membership fees for reading groups then and meet-up groups now, there are still hidden costs in conducting QS projects. Whereas the Mass Observations did not require anything but a pen and paper, Quantified Self often involves expensive digital technology. Even a minimal configuration for nike+ self monitoring sets you back some $ 200 for a pair of shoes and the pedometer sensor. This is not to mention the costs for the smartphone without which the nike+ App won’t run. Other QS systems ask for soft- and hardware worth a few thousand dollars. It is probably no coincidence that quite a few of the devices are produced and marketed in the San Francisco Bay area, where QS headquarters are located as well. The least visible and yet the most profitable aspect of QS is the harvesting of data and the commodification of data. Physical activity, geoposition, liquid consumption, body weight, pulse, speed and direction, vitamin intake, body temperature are only a few examples of information about the wearer of smart QS technologies that can be recorded, transmitted and sold. 3.  Quantified self, or «knowledge by numbers» as the QS mantra goes, leaves to a rather small degree space for qualitative observations. With the exception of a few mood-trackers the observations are based on quantitative measurements only. Mass Observation, however, was to some degree based upon quantitative data (How many pints did a person drink in a pub?) but more often on qualitative information (Was it a good day? Did a couple at Blackpool beach look fond of each other? Are they expected to exchange kisses?). In April 1938 an observation series that was also called a «competition» – in quotation marks – asked how the diarists felt about happiness. Other than what one would expect from a QS mission about happiness, the MO observers were not asked to rate their individual level of happiness. Instead a fundamental discussion about the concept and the interpretations of happiness was initiated.

  D. Lupton, The Quantified Self, Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 2016, p. 40.

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Fig. 2: What is Happiness?

The diarists translated their visual observations into written text and added an interpretative layer of value systems, speculative estimation and autobiographic framing. This led so far that the diarists wrote in a poetic style and freely added dreams and daydreams to their more ‘objective’ remarks (cf. Fig. 3). Maybe this can be traced back to André Breton’s influence on Humphrey Jennings and Jenning’s poetic approach to the scientific undertaking of the creation of an »Archive of the Everyday»7. 4.  QS is politically neutral as far as the core measuring procedure is concerned (One might, however, argue that the exclusive subscription to digital measuring technologies creates a bias towards a position of power, class and ethnicity). MO conceived their active observations in a social context as in line with the emancipation of the proletariat – and in particular the working population of the Northwest of England. In the diaries we read frequently about solidarity amongst ‘ourselves’ and we often encounter mockery about ‘rich people’. Even the English Queen is being criticized or characterized as not being of any relevance: «I must say that I don’t really care about the Royalties» (Diarist on the occasion of the Coronation Day).

  Cf. I. Gazeley – C. Langhamer, The Meanings of Happiness in Mass Observation’s Bolton, «History Workshop Journal», 75 (2013) 1, pp. 159-189. 7

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Fig. 3: Diarist’s notes on Coronation Day, 12th May 1937.

5.  Self-critical assessment and a self-interrogation about the methods used have been an integral part of MO. In the survey on The Pub and the People, Tom Harrison noted that «what people say is only one part – sometimes a not very important part – of the whole pattern of their thought and behaviour»8. Observers and diarists were constantly asked to reflect about their observation and about their role in the wider project of an anthropology of everyday life. This is not the case with QS. The meet-ups are built upon of an agonistic mode of showing that the self-trackers have developed a more detailed, more objective and technologically more advanced method of measuring their ‘lively data’. Self-critique or even a critique of the project in general is unheard of. 6.  QS is in tune with a neoliberal system that suggests that our problems can be solved by ourselves and by ourselves only. Problems are said to be primarily individual problems and not societal dysfunctionalities that the community should debate and society should look after. Antonio Maturo exemplifies what this means in relation to health services using QS methods: (…) there is the risk of the extremization of a neoliberal conception of the self by which health comes to be considered an individual issue disconnected from social inequality and other socio-economic factors which

8   Cf. Mass Observation, The Pub and the People: A Worktown Study, London, Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987, p. xvii.

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heavily affect the individual’s chances to stay healthy (Link and Phelan 2010). This would likely result in a society which considers health a commodity like all others, and not a social right that the State should protect and promote9. Another example describing the differences is how QS and MO deal with alcohol consumption. Deborah Lupton points out that enterprises like the Soberlink company sell wearable devices for breath-testing, sweat monitoring and facial analysis10. All of these measurements are not indicative of the social circumstances of alcohol consumption and take physiological data as the exclusive indicator of addiction or ‘abuse’. The MO observations contextualised the consumption of alcohol by adding bits of information like «a joyful evening in a pub after a football match», «alone in the rain on a park bench in Liverpool», or the like11. With out such contextualising information «lively data»12 seems to be quite lifeless.

Fig. 4: «It has been reported (…) that the average pub-goer in Bolton drank 3.45 pints of beer in the evening». Photo by Humphrey Spender.

  A. Maturo, ‘Doing Things with Numbers’: The Quantified Self and the Gamification of Health, «Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology», 1 (2015), p. 11. 10   Cf. Lupton, The Quantified Self, p. 20. 11   Cf. J. Phelan – B. Link – P. Tehranifar, Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications, «Journal of Health and Social Behavior», 51 (2010), pp. 28-40. 12   Cf. Beer – Burrows, Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data. 9

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To conclude, one could say that self-tracking as promoted by the Quantified Self movement is an on-going process of subjectivisation that is necessarily based on objectifying technologies13. In order to tackle the situation that has been called the «schizophrenic situation»14 of the «double I»15 (Kant 1804) it has been demonstrated plausibly by the Mass Observation movement that a wider perspective of the ‘I’ as an integral part of ‘ourselves’ renders space for self-reflexivity beyond navel gazing. It became also apparent that digitally mediated and numerical self-tracking of QS lacks the poetic opportunities and the emancipative strength of an «anthropology of ourselves». Mathias Fuchs Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany [email protected]

  Cf. e.g. N. Zillien, Digitale Selbstvermessung als reflexive Selbstverwissenschaftlichung, Unpublished lecture at the workshop “Digitale Transformationen: Alltag, Arbeit, Algorithmen” at Fernuniversität Hagen, 15 June 2019. 14   Cf. König, Subjektivität und Wahrheit. 15   See footnote 1. 13

“WORK” IN PROGRESS. THOUGHTS ON THE CHANGE OF THE CONCEPT OF WORK

The terms ‘work’ and ‘culture’ are closely linked. On the one hand, human shapes culture by working the environment or by producing things. On the other hand, human works and actions are expressions of culture. If our social practice changes, culture changes too. Today, often, the effects of AI and digitization processes on everyday life stay under discussion. For example, there is great public and political interest in how workplaces are changing due to increasing digitization and automation. The International Labor Organization (ILO) of the United Nations published in January 2019 its report Work for a Brighter Future. The commission emphasizes in this context that «new forces are transforming the world of work. The transitions involved a call for decisive action»1. Especially technological developments such as AI, automation, and robotics would create new jobs, but also new requirements and challenges for employees and employers2. In front of this background, the Commission suggests «a human-centered agenda for the future of work that strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the center of economic and social policy and business practice»3. The demands of the ILO Commission illustrate that the establishment of digital technologies will influence, if not radically change, various areas of the working world. This development is also associated with cultural changes, for example, a reorganization of the institutional framework or a change in social practice.

1   See: Global Commission on the Future of Work, Work for a brighter future, Geneva, International Labour Organization, 2019, p. 10. 2   Ibidem. 3   See ibidem, p. 11.

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The demand for a human-centered agenda illustrates changes in working. The need for political action raises ethical questions about how we want to live and work. Closely linked to ethical questions is an understanding of what we call work. In consequence, also conceptual questions become central. What do we, as social actors, associate with the term ‘work’? How does this understanding manifest itself in social practice? What changes is it confronted with? Thus, against the background of digitization, not only questions about occupations, production sites, and economic structures that are changing, become central. Also, it is to consider the understanding of the term work. Maybe it has to be redefined. This article aims to provide some ideas on this aspect. To this end, the focus is first drawn on some aspects of the historical development of the concept of work. In a further step, the development of extra-domestic work is used to illustrate how revaluations of work had an influence on social reality and how the notions of work are changing today in the face of processes of digitization. 1.  On Change in the Evaluation of Work The term ‘work’ has been defined several times. Its meanings are as diverse as the attempts for definition4. One possibility is to describe the term ‘work’ as an elementary human activity5 that involves working and producing to achieve a purpose6. The etymology of terms that denote work also expresses this. The German word Arbeit, for example, derives from the Latin arvum, or arva, which means plowed field. Also, the French travail refers to purposeful activity. It derives from the Latin word tribalus, a device for taming horses. In addition, the idea of work as a physical and painful activity is repeatedly expressed7. Especially in Greek and Roman antiquity the performance of physical work was devalued8. Those who had to do physical and mostly not free work lacked a basis of existence. In contrast, intellectual work, such as philosophical or political activities, was highly valued but not remunerated. They were honorable activities precisely because they required property. In Roman antiquity, anyone who was engaged in a paid activity was expelled

  G. Ropohl, Technologische Aufklärung, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1991, p. 139.   M.-D. Chenu, Arbeit, in J. Ritter, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 1, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 1971, pp. 480-487: 480. 6   Ropohl, Technologische Aufklärung, p. 139. 7   Chenu, Arbeit, p. 481. 8   A. Komlosy, Arbeit. Eine globalhistorische Perspektive, Vienna, Promedia, 2014, p. 13. 4 5

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from state offices9. In ancient times man assessed work in two ways. On the one hand, a devaluation of physical labor took place. On the other hand, one appreciated creative work. This opposing assessment of physical and mental work was loosened in the Middle Ages and in early modern times. Within the framework of a Christian work ethic, physical work gained a positive connotation10. Furthermore, secularization processes within the framework of the establishment of mercantilism since the 16th century also led to an emphasis on value-creating human labor as well as on the priority of goods. This led to the mediation of new meanings, as earthly things moved more into focus. Work served not only the production but also the increase of property. Within the framework of a mercantilist economic system, the idea of financial wealth and property through work became increasingly accepted. Work no longer served only to secure a livelihood but was regarded as the purpose of life11. However, the idea of work as a laborious and annoying activity remained. In the end of the 17th century this assessment of work was finally overcome12. Only in a modern-day perception, physical as well as intellectual work has for the first time been recognized and valued as a source of wealth and prosperity13. In the history of ideas, a fundamental change in the evaluation of work began to take place since the beginning of the 17th century onwards. In the 20th century, it led to an evaluation of society as a working society14. Francis Bacon, among others, prepared the history of ideas of this turn15. Associated with his establishment of an experimental-empirical conception of a useful science is the idea of the domination of nature by technology for the purpose of improving human living conditions16. In Bacon’s eyes, techniques, not arguments, promote people’s well-being17. With this pragmatic view of nature, nature is regarded as a resource. Its exploration and control lead to social progress, and it is to be used to improve the quality of life18. In this context,

9   M. J. Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland. Eine historische, ethisch-systematische Studie zum Berufs- und Arbeitsethos, Hamburg, Dr. Kovač, 1996, pp. 44-46. 10   Komlosy, Arbeit, p. 14. 11   Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland, pp. 90, 91. 12   Komlosy, Arbeit, p. 15. 13   Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland, p. 88. 14   H. Arendt, Vita activa oder von tätigen Leben, Munich, Piper, 2002, p.12. 15   Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland, p. 92. 16   W. Kroh, Francis Bacon, Munich, C.H. Beck, 1987, p. 8. 17   Ibidem, p. 33. 18   F. Bacon, Novum Organum, ed. by M. Buhr, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, p. XVIII.

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Bacon highlights intellectual, but also physical work as an essential aspect of social progress. Another root of the changed valuation of work can be found in the justification of property by John Locke. According to Locke, one acquires a right to property by working on the environment19. One can acquire the world materially through possession but also intellectually through the acquisition of knowledge. Thus, Locke accepted both physical and mental work as sources of property20. In this view, work is then no longer just a necessity for the poor but has the potential to promote individual economic prosperity21. Nevertheless, the focus of Locke was on meeting individual needs, which should be covered by work and property for all. Further accumulation of property was not considered virtuous22. Recognizing work as an active principle of all estates was accompanied in the 18th century by the development of a systematically constructed and founded economic theory23. In the context of a developing modern economy, which uses mathematical models, it became possible to economically evaluate work independently of humans according to its results for the market24. Work itself was abstracted as a production factor25, as can be seen from Adam Smith’s writings. In view of the increase in production experienced in England since the 18th century, supported by a differentiated division of labor, the production factor increasingly became a relevant yardstick for assessing the value of goods, alongside land and capital26. Individual self-interest remains central to Smith. He interpreted it as a basis for economic prosperity27. But the prosperity of a nation also requires structuring the market. Therefore, it seems necessary for Smith to exclude extern factors, such ethical premises. Market structures rather have to be found

  J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Of Property, London, 1823, available at: http:// www.yorku.ca/comninel/courses/3025pdf/Locke.pdf, p. 116. 20   Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland, p. 102. 21   Ibidem, p. 88. 22  Locke, Two Treatises of Government, pp. 117-118. 23   Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland, p. 89. 24   M. Aßländer (ed. by), Handbuch Wirtschaftsethik, Stuttgart – Weimar, Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2011, p. 33. 25   Komlosy, Arbeit, p. 15. 26   B. Irrgang, Homo faber. Arbeit, technische Lebensform und menschlicher Leib, Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann, 2010, p. 10. 27   P. Kunzmann – F.-P. Burkard – F. Wiedmann, dtv-Atlas Philosophie, Munich, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 2017, p. 127. 19

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on mechanisms such as price, supply, and demand28. Smith thus integrates work into a market economy model and regards it as a systemic factor. Work became part of an economic system, that is supposed to regulate itself and which orientates towards the production of goods, the exchange principle and supply, and demand. This approach implies a changed view of work away from a service of individual satisfaction of needs towards a factor necessary for the prosperity of society as a whole. One works not only for oneself but also for the good of society. In the course of the growth euphoria of the developing English liberalism of the 18th century, the value of professional work increased. Due to the abstractions, one treated it also as a commodity and object29. Karl Marx took up this aspect in the 19th century. While the idea of the liberation and self-realization of man through work existed at that time, Marx developed the idea of the alienation of work through the private property of means of production. According to him, private property promotes social injustice, exploitation, and suffering because it forms the structures of class society, in which one made a distinction between those who own and those who do not. Nevertheless, Marx sees the human being perfectioned through work. Man can be brought to perfection by work, and it seems possible to humanize the world of work by destroying external production30. The concept of work thus becomes a necessary condition of human nature31. Man, as a worker and creative being is also an interpretation of the homo faber. This term is used philosophically by Henri Bergson and Max Scheler as a counter term to homo sapiens in the 20th century. Furthermore, Max Frisch dealt with him literarily32. Manufacturing denotes in this context a competence of humanity as a species33. Indirectly, the speech of the homo faber refers to a changed understanding of work. By now, work is interpreted as an anthropological constant and not as a laborious necessity of the poor. To understand work as an essential characteristic of man also testifies that we identify a person by its work. With the turn to modern times, the concept of work underwent a reevalu­ ation. Physical work received a positive connotation and became the foundation of social development. By linking the acquisition of property to the

  Aßländer, Handbuch Wirtschaftsethik, pp. 40-41.   Schnarrer, Arbeit und Wertewandel im postmodernen Deutschland, pp. 109-111. 30   Ibidem, pp. 113-114. 31   Irrgang, Homo faber, p. 74. 32   Ibidem, p. 9. 33   Irrgang, Homo faber, p. 13. 28 29

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concept of work, Locke described it as a source of individual and social wealth. The development of the modern national economy as Adam Smith founded it takes up this aspect and continues it within the framework of a market economy concentration. Smith sees work as a systemic factor. Thus, work became a factor of production. It was abstracted and given an economic value. Furthermore, Marx carried on this approach to work as an economic factor. He regarded work as a conditio humana and not merely a tedious burden. He interpreted work as an anthropological constant. As a result of the integration of the concept of labor into a market economy system, it was increasingly narrowed down to paid work. Work is not any physical or mental activity, but one that aims to acquire property and wealth. 2.  “Work” in Social Reality Processes such as industrialization or urbanization centralized work at workplaces in Europe during the 18th and 19th century. In consequence, wage labor continued to expand. From a socio-historical perspective, this also led to a shift in the assessment of work. Its interpretation focused on extra-domestic labor. In some western European countries, extra-domestic labor has slowly but gradually developed into a dominant form of work by the beginning of the 18th century34. Especially in urban areas, the ‘whole house’ as a unit organizing family and work in rural housekeeping, was opposed by the concept of extra-domestic labor in urban areas35. As a result, new forms of organization, such as a separation of home and workplace, were connected with their establishment and restructured everyday life. The evolving understanding of leisure time in the bourgeoisie since the second half of the 18th century indicates such a change. In this part of society, the concept of extra-domestic labor was opposing to free time and privacy at home. According to a bourgeois family ideal, the husband was responsible for paid work, whereas the wife took care of domestic and educational work at home. The home was the place for family. It was separated from the location of paid work36. Thus, the regulation of the work by a workplace led to a distinction between ‘free time’ and ‘working time’. Concepts such as privacy in the sense of a family place or free time, in which no paid tasks have to be   Komlosy, Arbeit, pp. 8-9.   M. Mitterauer, Familie und Arbeitsteilung, Wien – Cologne – Weimar, Böhlau Verlag, 1992, p. 356. 36   Ibidem, pp. 350-351. 34 35

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done, developed in relation to extra-domestic work and restructured everyday life. With the emergence and expansion of extra-domestic labor, a new organizational form of work and everyday life has developed, which implies certain patterns of order. These patterns of order also become apparent when looking at institutional aspects of extra-domestic work. One example is the employment contract, which expresses the relevance of the observance of rights and obligations, on both the employee and the employer side. But also, the workplace as a place where an employee stays for a certain period of time and which is regulated by insurance law represents them. A third example is working time, which in most cases represents a benchmark of remuneration, as the term ‘hourly wage’ makes clear. All these aspects are on one hand expressions of certain organizational patterns. On the other hand, they stabilize these patterns. They shape actions as well as the individual perception. The power of institutional arrangements can be expressed by sanctioning the infringement of rights and obligations, that contracts regulate. These institutional aspects of work have developed historically. The practice of work has changed because a new form of work has established itself, and this new form of work has gone through institutionalization processes. In consequence, the cultural understanding of what is legitimately considered ‘work’ changed. By the beginning of the 20th century, a new notion of work established. Work became related to free, extra-domestic work. The term describes a remunerated task, structured by a contract between employee and employer37. This cultural understanding of work is still a predominant concept today, even though it is criticized, as debates on reproduction work show38. Today it is the use of digital technologies that challenge our understanding of work as extra-domestic employment. One example of this is the spatial flexibility that is made possible. Digital networking enables decentralized work structures. A work process potentially occurs simultaneously and at several locations. Thus, work loses its clearly definable place because of the disintegration of work activity and workplace39. A wide variety of professions, for example, can be practiced from anywhere in the world, provided that the infrastructure is well developed, as the term ‘digital nomad’ suggests.   J. Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Munich, Ch. Beck, 2016, p. 993. 38  E. Küng, Arbeit und Freizeit, Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1971, pp. 87-88. 39   J. Rohbeck, Technik – Kultur – Geschichte. Eine Rehabilitierung der Geschichtsphilosophie, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2000, p. 229. 37

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Today, it is easy to conduct meetings and consultations via the Internet. Also, the Home office is becoming an increasingly popular concept in Europe40, which could also represent an alternative to part-time models in socio-political terms. What has long been a central characteristic, the workplace as a permanent location, is becoming less and less necessary. Linked to these developments is the flexibility of working time41. The well-known worries of permanent availability by employees and the fact that the availability of employees is presupposed and associated with, to trigger pressure on the employee to ensure this even if he wants to keep the job, illustrates this flexibility of working time. This flexibilization could also involve a change in our understanding of free time. What is free time if it is not the time I am not at work, but there is also no fixed end of the workday? Is free time then the time in which we do not work? Is every break already free time and is it free time when I am on a call? Such considerations are not new, but they are gaining in importance again. The understanding of the term ‘work’ changes in the course of history. The notion of extra-domestic work confined the concept by the 18th century. Different academic approaches, as well as historical developments influenced this process. Examples for these developments include industrialization, bureaucratization, and the development of a market economy. In particular, the centralization of production in factories led to a change in the spatial and temporal dimensions of work. The spread of wage labor, which was carried out outside the home was one consequence. ‘Working time’ was subsequently seen in contrast to leisure time. A change in the valuation of work took place. ‘Work’ was seen as extra-domestic work. But digitization in the working world has made that some characteristics of this notion of work faded away. Work as social practice increasingly moves away from the demands that were previously associated with the concept. Employment does not necessarily have to take place outside the home or at a fixed workplace. There are jobs one could do at any time of the day or night, or work processes that involve a large community and everyone contribute as much as they can, for example in some projects of software development. Institutional claims to the validity of what we call work are expressed by a workplace, working hours, employment contracts, or an employee and employer relationship. However, they are less and less legitimized by practice. Many irregular activities that 40   K. Brenke, Home Office: Möglichkeiten werden bei weitem nicht ausgeschöpft, in: DIW Wochenbericht, Home Office, 5 (2016), available at: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.526038.de/16-5-1.pdf, pp. 95-105: 96-97. 41   Rohbeck, Technik – Kultur – Geschichte, p. 229.

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constitute work and a service to society do not fall under the classic notion of labor. And perhaps there will be more, stimulated by digitization processes. Digitization in the world of work does by no means necessarily lead to the abolition of extra-domestic employment42. On the one hand, however, work processes may be relocated to the home through digital networking. On the other hand, it is possible to outsource work processes to all kinds of locations. This decentralization thus promotes diversification of forms of labor. It does not necessarily have to be extra-domestic work taking place in a fixed job. Accordingly, the relationship between work and leisure time, as it had developed since the 18th century, can be transformed again. 3.  Digitization and the Transformation of the World of Work An understanding of work as extra-domestic labor has been shaken since the 1980s. Especially the security of employment is questioned by outsourcing processes and by digitization. They require deregulation of labor law certainties but also lead to a reorganization of production and supply chains. In research and in politics, demands were made to reflect and reform working practices as well as our understanding of work. Above all hovers the question how the concept of labor can be freed from economic narrowing and taken up in its diversity43. In view of the spread of digitization in the working world, this discussion continues to appear relevant, because digitization is changing the way we work. New institutionalization processes of work are thus being driven forward, as the debates on the subject and the demands of the ILO Commission illustrate. Specific strategies are required to meet challenges, such as the emergence of new occupations or the reduction of jobs through automation. The institutional character of work is no longer guaranteed and is changing itself. It is necessary to reflect the concept of work, as mentioned. The question is which basic ideas are associated with this concept? Are they fundamental to design appropriate approaches? What does work mean to us? Which activities should be remunerated? Is an appreciation of work always linked to remuneration? Such fundamental questions also imply ethical questions and they question our values. What is the purpose of work? Is it the individual, the common good, or the good life? Why are activities that serve the common good not

  Ibidem, p. 232.   Komlosy, Arbeit, p. 20.

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remunerated or better remunerated? It starts with our nurses, but it also affects those who build open-source software that millions of people later use. Why do influencers put themselves at the service of corporations rather than using their influence for sustainability, a profound discussion of political events or scientific knowledge? What the use of digital technologies in the working world challenges us to do is to develop an appropriate way of dealing with our needs. Looking at the current discussions about how digitization encircles human life, we see a trend: concepts such as the ‘information society’, the ‘infosphere’ (in which we allegedly live)44 or concepts such as ‘digital culture’45 are becoming more and more prominent. They refer, albeit in different orientations, to the perceived tendency towards mechanization of the Lifeworld and subsequently of our culture. Even if this point of view has a certain legitimacy, the concepts that encompass it often contain a contrast between technology and culture. Technicist approaches that ascribe technical developments influence on social contexts and conditions are increasingly attracting attention. But even culturalist approaches sometimes assume this dualism when they investigate the question of how technology is created, shaped and changed by social and cultural developments46. Starting from a broad concept of culture, this is describable as a world of symbolic forms47. It allows interpreting human works and actions as cultural expressions. Then, and this is the point technicist and some cultural approaches neglect, technology is culture. It is a cultural product and part of social practice. Technologies are shaped by human forms of action and by social conditions. But technologies also change them. They are, no matter in which field they will be used, part of the Lifeworld. They change human practice as part of it48. Technologies do not stand against man as a mere world of things (as artifacts and technical systems). They comprise human interaction49. The use and application of technologies thus shape human action, such as working. Work practice is a cultural form of expression. Thus, the use of digital technologies in the working world shows that they question our cultural understanding of work.   L. Floridi, Die 4. Revolution. Wie die Infosphäre unser Leben verändert, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2015, pp. 10-11. 45   Ch. Gere, Digital Culture, II ed., London, Reaction Books, 2008, p. 7. 46   J.-H. Passoth, Technik und Gesellschaft. Sozialwissenschaftliche Transformation und die Transformation der Moderne, Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008, pp. 50-51. 47   Kunzmann – Burkard – Wiedmann, dtv-Atlas Philosophie, p. 175. 48   Ropohl, Technologische Aufklärung, p. 142. 49   Rohbeck, Technik – Kultur – Geschichte, p. 226. 44

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The spread of digital technologies in the working world and the resulting changes in working practice will have an impact on how we understand and evaluate this practice. However, it is important to note that our working practices and the question of the appropriate use of digital technology should not be reduced to digital aspects, as it seems in the above terms. In the digital working world, humans work because of human needs. Then, it is much more important to develop a cultural understanding of digitality that helps to connect it sensibly to the working world and human needs instead of reducing human action and needs to a digital world. In consequence, it is also important to establish a wider understanding of the notion of work. This wider notion needs to integrate some new work practices in an appropriate way. Facing digitization, we will need to transform our working practices. But while this trend experiences a lot of interest, we also have to bear in mind, that a change to our notion of work is imminent. Nadine Reinhardt TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

THE FORMATION OF THE SUBJECT IN THE DIGITAL CULTURE. SOME CONSIDERATIONS, HYPOTHESES AND RESEARCH RESULTS CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE

1.  Subjectivity and Freedom of Decision? What does digitization mean for education and the development of individuality and subjectivity through education? This question is not easy to answer; its processing requires further research. First, only a few historical aspects of the term ‘subjectivity’ will be outlined. What is meant by subjectivity has increasingly become the theme of literature and philosophy since the beginning of modernity. In the work of Johann Amos Comenius, the formation of the subject still plays a subordinate role. Education is conceived as the effort to impart the divine world order to all people and thereby make them Christians. Education is service to God, is worship. The situation changes with René Descartes’ famous phrase: «I think; therefore, I am». This is the striking beginning of a growing interest in consciousness and subjectivity for the self-understanding of man. In thinking, human beings become aware of themselves and human subjectivity develops. In Jacques Rousseau’s and Wilhelm von Humboldt’s work, the starting point of education and human development (Bildung) changes; it is no longer designed by the divine order, but by the individual, by the subject; the education and development of the individual becomes the task. Humboldt calls for a general education (Allgemeinbildung) of the subject, which is understood as linguistic, moral and aesthetic education. At the same time, it is Johann Gottlieb Fichte who radicalizes the idea of subjectivity. He assumes that the I sets itself, that is, subjectivity is the condition of existence. But the ego not only creates itself; it also creates the non-ego. Subjectivity includes self-esteem, self-feeling and self-knowledge. The subject can only conceive of itself as a subject in relation to the world, to other people and to oneself. The intentionality of the subject and of consciousness plays a central role in this.

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Subjectivity is pre-reflexive. It is bound to the body; it is embodied. Awareness and self-awareness are formed by experiences. Sensual experiences, body sensations play an important role. Thomas Nagel’s question «what is it like to be a bat?» is unanswerable1. From a third-person perspective, no statements can be made about a first-person perspective. Following on from Michel Foucault’s reflections on the disciplining and self-control of modern man and with reference to his later thoughts on selfcare2, authors such as Ulrich Beck have worked on the ‘technologies of the self’, i.e. the technologies with which the modern human being produces itself and produces its subjectivity3. How is the self formed, how does subjectivity arise? In principle, freedom and indeterminacy are central conditions of subjectivity. The modern European subject can choose and decide between alternatives, which often must produce themselves first. It creates its biography through decisions: this includes the choice of a life partner, a profession and central living conditions. The ability to make decisions is a constitutive feature of subjectivity. From an anthropological perspective, however, the question arises of how free people really are in their decisions. While it is necessary, for reasons of principle, to retain the freedom of choice, it should not be overlooked that it is restricted by physiological, cultural, social and material social conditions4. Although the number of choices has increased sharply, this has not created any real alternatives, especially if the decision refers only to an alternative such as the choice between two equivalent smartphones of two competing companies. Andreas Reckwitz has also pointed out this fact and made it clear that the fragmentation of society has led to an expansion of the spectrum of ‘singularities’, without thereby enlarging the real decision-making possibilities5.

  Cf. Th. Nagel, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, «The Philosophical Review», LXXXII (1974) 4, pp. 435-450. 2   Cf. M. Foucault, Der Wille zum Wissen, in Id., Sexualität und Wahrheit, vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1976; Id., Die Sorge um sich, in Id., Sexualität und Wahrheit, vol. 3, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1984. 3   Cf. U. Beck – Ch. Lau (ed. by), Entgrenzung und Entscheidung, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2004. 4   Cf. B. Latour, Eine neue Soziologie für eine neue Gesellschaft. Einführung in die Akteur-­ Netzwerk-Theorie (1979), Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2007; A. Spengler, Das Selbst im Netz. Zum Zusammenhang von Sozialisation, Medien und ihren Technologien, Baden-Baden, Nomos, 2018. 5   Cf. A. Reckwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten: Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2017. 1

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2.  Unwanted Side Effects of Subjectivation? The focus on the subject in European modernization has led to profound social and cultural developments. Without them, human rights would not have developed, and their universal recognition would not have been universal. Many cultural developments are closely related to the discovery of the subject, the development of subjectivity and the consciousness of its uniqueness. I am thinking of the achievements of the European Enlightenment, the democratization associated with it and the development of legal certainty. Nevertheless, critical inquiries into the European focus of the subject and the associated view of man and the world are required. Three developments have had drastic effects on the history of Europe6: –– egocentrism of Western culture with its focus on competition, self-centeredness, and lack of solidarity; –– logocentrism with the development of the European understanding of reason, rationality and rational behavior; –– ethnocentrism, with its effects on the emergence of exorbitant nationalism, which has led to millions of deaths. These three developments may be understood, at least in part, also as unwanted side effects of the European subject centering. They also led to a violent relationship with nature. I base my argument on a figure of thought developed by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which they have shown that the reason cherished so highly can turn into its opposite7. The great achievement of European culture in placing the subject and its rights as a human being at the center of cultural development may also have produced unwanted side effects of violence. Industrialization, exploitation of Earth’s resources, destruction of the environment and climate change can be interpreted this way. These side effects cannot be explained only as side effects of overestimating subjectivity. There are many other reasons responsible for these negative side effects, which to a large extent are also tied to the development of capitalism and neoliberalism in modernity and Anthropocene. The

  Cf. Ch. Wulf (ed. by), Exploring Alterity in a Globalized World, London – New York – New Delhi, Routledge, 2016; Id., Bildung als Wissen vom Menschen im Anthropocene, Weinheim – Basel, Beltz Juventa, 2020. 7   Cf. M. Horkheimer – Th. W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, Frankfurt a. M., Fischer, 1971. 6

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well-known Chinese philosopher Tu Weiming sees these connections as similar and wonders if there cannot be an Asian modernization that does not repeat the mistakes of European modernization, especially the overvaluation of the individual and the increase of violence against nature and human beings8. The question is, to what extent digitization of the world community is involved in the dynamics of the Anthropocene, the age of man9? Is it accelerating the misguided development of modernity and intensifying all economic, social and cultural processes? Is there not a connection between the focus of the subject and man’s dominion over the planet, which raises many questions that have so far been little explored. Digitization is an extraordinarily effective strategy to extend human power over the planet. Many of the characteristic features of the Anthropocene today can only be realized with the help of digitization. These include genetic research, the increasing interfaces between the human body and machines and Artificial Intelligence. But even major construction projects such as the new airport in Beijing, the huge dams and nuclear power plants are not possible without digitization. Digitization is now permeating all areas of life and linking them together, so that it continues the positive and negative developments of the Anthropocene at tremendous speed10. Will the development of the Anthropocene lead to an implosion11? Are not the necessary reactions to these developments in conflict with the rights of the subjects to determine their lives, their relationship to the world, to other people and to themselves? Perhaps digitization is speeding up developments that have long been considered positive and part of the ‘great narratives’ of European culture whose unwanted side effects are now becoming increasingly apparent? Will the development of the Anthropocene lead to an implosion? Will this situation also lead to a critical assessment of digitization? Without digitization, there would not be such a sophisticated war machine with nuclear and hydrogen bombs, genetic manipulation with its unmanageable consequences, and artificial intelligence with its insecurities. Does not McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ apply for digitization as

  Cf. W. Tu, Creativity: A Confucian View, «Dao», VI (2008), pp. 115-124; Id., Confucian Humanism in Perspective, «Frontiers of Literary Studies in China», VII (2013), pp. 333-338. 9   Cf. Wulf, Bildung als Wissen vom Menschen im Anthropocene. 10   Cf. I. C. Gil – Ch. Wulf (ed. by), Hazardous Future: Disaster, Representation and the Assessment of Risk, Berlin – Munich – Boston, De Gruyter, 2015. 11   Cf. Wulf, Bildung als Wissen vom Menschen im Anthropocene; A. Federau, Pour une philosophie de l’Anthropocène, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2017; N. Wallenhorst, L’Anthropocène décodé pour les humains, Paris, Le Pommier, 2019. 8

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well? Is not it the decisive medium that tacitly changes the world through its integration into everyday life12? 3.  Global Youth in Digital Trajectories The social and cultural significance of digitization in the Anthropocene has and will largely depend on how young people deal with digital culture. Therefore, in an ethnographic study ‘Global Youth in Digital Trajectories’, we examined how young people deal with digital culture and how that influences their way of living and their subjectivity. By examining adolescents in India, Russia, Brazil, England, Germany and Greece, we were able to show which subliminal power digital media have. In our international case study, we found that there are still different levels of integration of the digital medium in adolescents’ day-to-day lives, but the tendency for digital media to become a staple part of everyday life, despite cultural differences across countries, is the same. The results of our study can be summarized in five points13: Firstly, with several ethnographic case studies of experiences of children and adolescents from three continents, we have shown that the distinction between an off-world and an on-line world in the lives of most young people is inaccurate. The on-line world is an integral part of the everyday life of young people in urban conditions. The special character of the on-line world, which some studies emphasize, no longer corresponds to the experience of young people today. Just as sport, games or artistic activities are forms of young people’s lives and subjectivity, on-line and off-line activities are just different forms or modes of everyday life for young people. The young people use online communication as a way of dealing with the tasks and problems of their daily lives. This makes it possible to make appointments and to communicate through the exchange of feelings and thoughts as well as the discussion of questions and problems and to develop new forms of social interaction. The links between on-line and off-line are part of the adolescents’ environment and allow them to communicate quickly and easily. One is – as some young people put it – always ready to communicate (pready). For many, retreating to a world without communication is unthinkable and undesirable. Most young

  Cf. A. Kraus – J. Budde – M. Hietzge – Ch. Wulf (ed. by), Handbuch Schweigendes Wissen, Weinheim, Juventa, 2017. 13   Cf. M. Kontopodis – C. Varvantakis – Ch. Wulf (ed. by), Global Youth in Digital Trajectories, London – New York – New Delhi, Routledge, 2017. 12

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people today want to be reachable, as they want to reach other young people immediately. The own availability and the availability of the others as well as the required flexibility are important. Second, we examine what new anthropological, social and cultural conditions and changes are emerging from the digital media in the life of virtual youth. They are as fundamental as the evolution of writing in Greek antiquity, which led to profound changes in mental structures. However, in the Plato’s dialogues, in which philosophizing is still taking place in speech, this transition from the spoken word to the written text already announces itself. As has been repeatedly shown, the emergence of writing leads to new forms of rational and argumentative speech14. Now it is necessary to avoid repetitions that are still of central importance for the aesthetics of the Homeric epics. Two thousand years later, the invention and proliferation of book printing have a similarly drastic effect15. In our multicultural study, we worked out a series of changes that could be reconstructed from the adolescents’ statements and give indications of how profound these changes are. The digital world of adolescents is multimodal. Our ethnographic case studies show in quotes from interviews, group discussions, and youth recordings, as well as from extensive participant’s and video-based participant’s observation: images, writing, and spoken language create new until now not yet realized connections. These have repercussions on the image, writing and language culture of the adolescents. Our investigation shows how images become media of communication between the adolescents. The spectrum ranges from selfies to scenes. More and more young people communicate their situation, their concerns, their emotions through images. They become producers, i.e. to young people who are productive by producing or selecting images, but at the same time also use their products and thereby undermine the distinction between producer and consumer. In pictures, iconic information, some of which cannot be expressed in terms of language, is communicated, which develops new sensibilities and competences among the young people. As the images become part of the adolescents and their imaginary, they modify or even cancel traditional distinctions between subject and ob-

  Cf. E. A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, New Haven, CT – London, Yale University Press, 1986; W. J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London – New York, Routledge, 2002; G. Gebauer – Ch. Wulf, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, Los Angeles – Berkeley, CA, California University Press, 1995. 15   Cf. M. Giesecke, Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1998. 14

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ject. As we can show in our research, new forms of creativity emerge, which are of central importance for the personality development of young people. Third, our research makes it clear that digital media has not only become an integral part of young people’s lives, it also makes clear that there is great potential for education and training, which has so far been underutilized. Our research shows the pedagogical potential of digital media to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all16. Through the production of texts and videos, digital media offer young people the opportunity to learn independently and creatively. The adolescents of our investigation involve their body and their emotions, creating new expressions and new social experiences through their digital activities. In these they are recognized and valued. As shown in our study, digital media enable new tools to be used and promote the development of new skills. They support processes of decentralization of educational influences and individualization of education. They contribute to the development of digital literacy and multiliteracy and thus to human development. In the connection with other forms and media of education digital media exert – as our school study in Brazil shows – a fascination on many pupils. This leads to the extension of many proven forms of learning to digital forms. Fourth, our study shows the high political potential of digital culture. Political issues, insights and beliefs are constructed in the digital public. Using their analysis, ethnographic researchers can gain insight into social crisis situations in which, as in Greece, the hope for the future has been broken for many young people and a young precariat has sprung up. Here young people try to express their political, economic, social and emotional situation in the production of video films. An expression of their hopelessness is expressed in the sentences of an epigram: «I do not hope for everything, I am not afraid of anything, I am free». In our study we show how, in continuous communication processes, images, schemas and interpretations of the political situation develop and mutually reinforce each other in the digital public. A bottom-up process of political participation emerges in which the attitude towards life of many young people is expressed. Here arises a pull, whose expansion hardly leaves the youngsters the possibility of deviating utterances and orientations. With the help of the Internet, a horizontal politicization arises in which feelings of hopelessness are intensified in mimetic processes. Everyone can participate at any time and feel recognized in the digital public

  Cf. UNESCO, Education for Sustainable Development Goals. Learning Objectives, Paris, UNESCO, 2017. 16

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and protected from the dangers of social reality. In another case study, we could show how the assessments between print media and the Internet are intensifying cross-media on major political issues such as ‘bribery’ and ‘rape’. If intensive coverage of a political topic is reported in the print media, this topic will also be taken up and further processed in the digital world of the Internet. Commentary on mobile communications reinforces commitment to political issues, but risks undermining political uniformity. Fifth, our research provides a multi-dimensional contribution to ethnographic digital research. The ethnographic methods we use are diverse and complementary. With their help, it must be made clear how fertile in this digital field of research ethnographic methods are. They make it possible to explore the deep structures of young people’s interaction with digital media, their communication with each other and with the world. While the Internet is a universal medium in which many people participate, ethnographic methods also make it possible to study the cultural diversity and diversity of digital media. Thereby we learn a lot about the questions and problems, feelings and assessment, life forms and dynamics of the adolescents. In this context also belongs the encounter with hybrid phenomena whose cultural origins are not clear and which are gaining in importance in the virtual worlds of the young people. In our study, we used several ethnographic techniques: interviews and group discussions that give space to the first person’s ego perspective and thereby convey much of the experience that young people have in the digital world. At the same time, we have used methods that focus on the it-perspective. These include, for example, participatory and video-based participant observation techniques. In our contribution to exploring different video games, we have used the unproven techniques of technography, which is a media-focused ethnography. Also, the analysis of the products that are created in the digital medium is enlightening. Creating a digital product, such as producing a text or a film, brings together many practices and skills. To explore this process ethnographically and to work out its performative character is an important challenge to the use of ethnographic methods and procedures17. This study shows that the digital world is a central part of the life of adolescents. The question now is to what extent the subjectivity of young people is developed or deformed in dealing with the digital world. This is a research question in which we must look for answers. Here it is important to explore the relationships between the subjectivity of young people in different life  Cf. G. Brandstetter et al. (ed. by), Rhythmus/Balance/Resonanz, «Paragrana. Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie», XXVII (2018) 1. 17

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styles, the digitization of the living environment of young people and the living conditions in the Anthropocene. It must be examined what influence it has on young people, that in the digital world they do not encounter the materiality of objects18. Instead, especially images, but also sounds, gain a hitherto thought impossible influence on the education of the imaginary and the subjectivity of the adolescents. It is necessary to examine the function of digital images in the lives of adolescents, what the linguistically limited image content, what the iconic image is and how young people can learn to develop a conscious and reflective approach to the socializing and visual elements of the digital world19. Today, it is not just the task of learning to read and familiarizing oneself with the world of writing. It is equally necessary to get familiar with the digital world, to study its educational effects, and to help young people acquire a reflexive approach to the digitized world. 4.  Gestural, Ritual and Mimetic Appropriation Forms of the Digital The digital world is as a central socialization and learning field and contributes considerably to the education of young people. I would like to mention three aspects that I consider important and which need further attention and research in terms of their contribution to the development of subjectivity: –– gestures of access, exit and navigation on the Internet (1); –– rituals in the digital culture and the ritualistic handling of digital programs (2); –– the mimetic appropriation of the digital world, especially of the iconic of digital images (3). 4.1.  Gestures Gestures play an important role in digital culture. They are significant movements of the body which, directed at addressees, express and display a

  Cf. A.-M. Nohl – Ch. Wulf, Mensch und Ding. Die Materialität pädagogischer Prozesse, «Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft», Sonderband 25 (2013). 19   Cf. Ch. Wulf, Bilder des Menschen. Imaginäre und performative Grundlagen der Kultur, Bielefeld, transcript, 2014; Id., Medienanthropologie, «Vierteljahreszeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik», XCIV (2018), pp. 40-50; Id., Bildung als Wissen vom Menschen im Anthropocene. 18

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shared intentionality. They are produced and understood in mimetic processes; they are of considerable importance to human communication in digital culture. Gestures are performative, i.e. they are staged and performed; in digital culture they create communities, collaborations and aesthetic productions. They show something and show themselves; they are ludic and self-referential. As ritual gestures, they are associated with institutions and thereby express hierarchies and power relations. Gestures are closely linked to the creation of emotions, thoughts and actions20. On the one hand, it is worth examining gestures that play a role in other contexts of life, such as the gesture of pointing, which also is important in programs of the digital culture. On the other hand, it is interesting to examine and interpret specific Internet or smartphone gestures, for example the gesture to expose private or even intimate conversations in public spaces like streets, trains and airports. Also, you can examine the aesthetic quality of specific gestures at the moment of entering or leaving the Internet, as well as the many gestures used to navigate the programs. 4.2.  The Ritual Handling of Digitization During the twelve-year period, the Berlin ritual study which was carried out in and around an inner-city primary school could show how young people use rituals in the four major socialization fields ‘family’, ‘school ‘,’peer group ‘and ‘media’21. In the research area ‘media’ it became obvious how strongly digital culture gained importance within a decade. Rituals, ritual arrangements and ritualizations play an increasingly important role in digital culture. This was evident in the examination of video games, which helped us to demonstrate the effects of (German) television on the students’ imaginary, independently of their different migration backgrounds. TV rituals determine the times when young people watched TV and when they communicated   Cf. Ch. Wulf et al., Die Geste in Erziehung, Bildung und Sozialisation: Ethnographische Feldstudien, Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2011; Ch. Wulf – E. Fischer-Lichte (ed. by), Gesten. Inszenierung, Aufführung, Praxis, Munich, Wilhelm Fink, 2010. 21   Cf. Ch. Wulf et al., Das Soziale als Ritual. Performativen Bedeutung von Gemeinschaft, Opladen, Leske und Budrich, 2001; Ch. Wulf et al., Bildung im Ritual. Schule, Familie, Jugend, Medien, Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004; Ch. Wulf et al., Lernkulturen im Umbruch. Rituelle Praktiken in Schule, Medien, Familie und Jugend, Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007; Ch. Wulf et al., Ritual and Identity: The Staging and Performing of Rituals in the Lives of Young People (Ethnography and Education), London, The Tufnell Press, 2010. 20

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on the TV programs with each other and thus created ritual communities. The performative character of the programs and the role of their repetition are important for the learning of young people22. Rituals help to incorporate not only the content, but also the sequence and rhythm of the programs, anchoring them in the imaginary of the young and thus connecting the young people to the digital culture. 4.3.  The Mimetic Appropriation of Images in the Digital World As a rule, pictures on the Internet are mainly viewed for their information content. They are looked at quickly. Once you have received the information, you are satisfied and lose interest in the picture. This is the usual way of dealing with pictures in the digitized world. It produces and habituates a viewing habit that is interested in information, but not in the iconic character of the picture. But also, a different way of dealing with pictures is possible in digital culture, where the interest is directed at the iconicity of the picture too. Such a handling of pictures is not self-evident; it must be learnt. In this case pictures do not merely convey information but have an aesthetic quality. You make experiences that are not purely linguistic. but in which it also is about the appropriation of the iconic character of the picture. For the development of a person such aesthetic experiences are of central importance. Aesthetical education occurs when pictures are not only interpreted, but when their iconic content is appropriated in a mimetic process. This is done by retrofitting the shapes and colors of the picture by the person who looks at the picture. The re-creation of a picture with the help of the imagination in a mimetic process aims at the appropriation of the specificity of the picture, at the iconic character, that otherwise cannot be grasped. In the digital world, such handling of images is rather unusual. However, it is an approach to pictures that focuses the iconic character of the image23. Mimetic processes are thus aimed at the re-creation of pictures by means of looking at them and to include them with the help of imagination into

22   Cf. Ch. Wulf – J. Zirfas (ed. by), Pädagogik des Performativen, Weinheim Basel, Beltz, 2007. 23   Cf. Ch. Wulf, Bilder des Menschen. Imaginäre und performative Grundlagen der Kultur, Bielefeld, transcript, 2014; Id., Anthropology: A Continental Perspective, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2013; Id., Das Rätsel des Humanen, Paderborn, Wilhelm Fink, 2013; Id., Anthropologie. Geschichte, Kultur, Philosophie, Köln, Anaconda, 2009 (second edition; first edition Reinbek, Rowohlt, 2004).

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the imaginary24. The visual re-creation of pictures leads to the process of appropriation, which transfers the images into the imaginary. The mimetic processing of pictures aims at the appropriation of their iconicity, which is given before, at, after and outside of any interpretation. When images have been incorporated into the imagery, they form reference points for interpretations that also may change their meaning over the years25. In dealing with images, it is about ‘protecting’ images from rapid interpretations that only focuses on their information value. It is the uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity of images to endure. You have to look at the picture, close your eye and try to reconstruct the image in your imaginary. In this process you have to ‘protect’ it from other images passing by in the flow of mental images. For this it needs concentration and power of thought. The re-creation of an image in looking at it is the first step; to hold on to it, to work on it, to unfold it in the imagination are further steps in the mimetic appropriation of images. The re-creation of an image in looking at it, the attentive lingering with it is no less a feat than the interpretive handling of it. In educational processes, the interlocking of these two ways of dealing with images is the task26. 4.4.  Perspectives Our empirical research has shown that digitization is part of the everyday culture of young people in all the countries and cultures studied, which is therefore directly involved in their formation and subjectivation. The subjectification of young people takes place in, with and through digital culture. These processes also produce unwanted side effects. Gestures, rituals and mimetic processes continue to play an important role in subjectivization. In the digital media, they lead to new forms of subjectivation; for many of them, their public character is characteristic. It creates new possibilities to deal productively with the world, with others and with oneself. In these processes, the imagery, the iconic character and the performativity of the images of the

24   Cf. J. R. Resina – Ch. Wulf (ed. by), Repetition, Recurrence, Returns: How Cultural Renewal Works, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, Roman & Littlefield, 2019. 25   Cf. Wulf, Anthropology: A Continental Perspective; Id., Das Rätsel des Humanen. 26   Cf. G. Gebauer – Ch. Wulf, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, Los Angeles – Berkeley, CA, California University Press, 1995; Gebauer – Wulf, Spiel, Ritual, Geste. Mimetisches Handeln in der sozialen Welt; S. Suzuki – Ch. Wulf (ed. by), Mimesis, Poiesis, and Performativity in Education, Münster – New York, Waxmann, 2017.

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digital culture play an important role. Extensive ethnographic case studies are required to understand the deep structures of subjectivization in the digitized lifeworld (Lebenswelt). Christoph Wulf Freie Universität Berlin, Germany [email protected]

ABSTRACTS

Bernhard Irrgang, Embedded Human Subjectivity and Digital Self The essay traces back the philosophical tradition of bodily embedded human subjectivity and confronts it with the peculiar phenomena of the digital age, namely the idea of “self-thinking” AI, Lifelogging and voluntary self-measurement in the medical context. It proposes a critical phenomenological and hermeneutical viewpoint on the premise of factuality to carefully develop an epistemology of mental reality. This might be able to avoid the flaws of an AI-research and a health-community obsessed with technical progress, data collecting, personalization and a mind-concept that proves eventually ambiguous in the worst way. Dealing both with human intelligence and human life, the human body stays a key point and must not be neglected.

Dennis Weiss, On the Subject of Technology This essay uses the AMC television show Humans (2015 – 18) as a lens through which to think about how we ought to address subjectivity in the digital culture. Drawing on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s philosophy of technological mediation, it argues that philosophy of technology can best address subjectivity in the digital culture by making a third turn, beyond the empirical and ethical turn, situating analyses of technology in an account of human persons informed by feminist theory.

Constanze Fanger, Knowledge and Autonomy. Changes of Perception in a Digital Culture Based on the embodiment of our thinking, perceiving and acting, various effects of a digital culture, which increasingly seems to relegate this embodiment to the background, are examined. Both the design of the human mind from the digital point of view and the increasing practice of perception and communication in virtual space

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are impaired by the imperatives of transparency and availability. Since our subjectivity is constituted in intersubjective and ecological references, the digitalization of the lifeworld affects our self-awareness and self-shaping. Taking up the manifold references between knowledge, transparency, freedom and autonomy, some fields of reflection will be opened up, with the aim to avoid that with the newly gained freedoms other, more non-transparent dependencies are created, and to deliberate how to exploit the empowering potentials of ICT.

Galit Wellner, Digital Subjectivity: From a Network Metaphor to a Layer-­ Plateau Model In the 1990s, Bruno Latour showed that the modern subject-object dichotomy loses its ability to successfully model contemporary technology-intensive reality, and suggested instead a new model of networks. This article aims to update Actor-­ Network Theory by suggesting a nuanced model of layers-plateaus, where subjectivity consists of plateaus and interacts with reality through technological layers. In this model, technologies are in charge of filling in the layers with data, and the human is in charge of the more flexible and meaning-production plateaus. The new model is exemplified by memories stored on the cellphone, augmented reality applications, and AI algorithms.

Friederike Frenzel, Can a Map Be Drawn of the Most Internal World? An Attempt to Reclaim the Common Sense The common sense-concept of the Scottish Philosophy of the 18th century united the Aristotelian observations about the senses with the materialistic and early-psychology doctrines of Locke. With the semiotic and linguistic-logical developments in the philosophy of the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, the foundations were laid for the computing research to discover and claim the term. This paper follows up the body-centered tradition of the common sense-term to confront the terms of common sense-reasoning and common sense-knowledge, coined by the current computing research, with it. This way, they are problematized by another field of research altogether, revealing qualms that point in a surprisingly general and fundamental direction.

Manja Unger-Büttner, How I Learned to Smile to Robots. On Anthropomorphism, Empathy and Transparent Technology Design This essay seeks to develop a concept of transparent design by using the example of designing robots as well as avatars. Background to this attempt is the current questioning and reflecting on anthropomorphism in robotics. Based on different

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theories of transparency in philosophy, the concept of ‘scope/Spielraum’ in design is introduced. Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of the ‘as if’ and the subsequent concept of fictional empathy by Thomas Fuchs are used to develop a concept of transparency in the context of a more or less anthropomorphic, yet conscious access to decisions in design as well as interaction with robots.

Federica Buongiorno, (Self-)Knowledge Through Numbers? Lifelogging as a Digital Technology of the Self Lifelogging can be described as «a form of pervasive computing which utilises softwares and sensors to generate a permanent, private and unified multimedia record of the totality of an individual’s life experience and makes it available in a secure and pervasive manner» (NTCIR-13 LifelogTask). As a private form of self-tracking, lifelogging is becoming increasingly widespread in technologically advanced societies and practices related to it are becoming part of most people’s everyday lives. Therefore, it is more important than ever to gain a critical understanding of the phenomenon. In this paper I am interested in particular in exploring the issue of the transformations in the perception, comprehension and construction of self, and hence in subjectification practices, deriving from the increasing integration of virtual and augmented reality and every-day life that is typical of lifelogging activities.

Andrea Pace Giannotta, Digital World, Lifeworld, and the Phenomenology of Corporeality The contemporary world is characterised by the pervasive presence of digital technologies that play a part in almost every aspect of our life. An urgent and much-debated issue consists in evaluating the repercussions of these technologies on our human condition. In this paper, I tackle this issue from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. I argue that phenomenology offers a contribution to our understanding of the implications of digital technologies, in the light of its analysis of the essential structures of human experience, and especially of its corporeal grounding. In the light of this analysis, it is possible to investigate the ways in which these essential structures are affected by digital technologies. In particular, it is possible to highlight the ways in which some digital technologies involve a process of disembodiment or simply a superficial embodiment of experience.

Lucilla Guidi, How to do Things with Rules? Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the Case of Algorithms In this paper I will describe the constitution of human praxis as an iterative process, with reference both to Heidegger’s phenomenological concept of Dasein and

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Wittgenstein’s account of rule-following, so as to sketch out a theoretical framework which might shed light on the meaning of algorithms. I will argue that human praxis constitutes itself in and through a performative process of iteration, which involves the impossibility of being grounded. This concept of groundlessness points to both the opacity of the context in which praxis is embedded and the unpredictability of human action. According to this theoretical framework, I wish to problematize the opacity involved in algorithms and how they follow rules, so as to underline some contrasting features between the human praxis and that of algorithms.

Mathias Fuchs, Mass Observation The article compares contemporary forms of self-observation and quantified self with the Mass Observation movement from the 1930s. Now and then ‘observers’ were concerned with precisely documenting a detailed account of various aspects of our physiological, social and emotional condition. The Mass Observation project conceived society as ‘ourselves’, whereas the Quantified Self movement is tailored to render an image of the individual’s self that is attempted to be understood via numbers. The ‘ourselves’ of the 30s and the many ‘selfs’ of our decade are accessed with different methods: qualitative observation versus digitally mediated measurement. The author proposes that beyond this methodological difference there are also different political positions being favoured by Quantified Self and Mass Observation. The emancipatory approach of the 1930s movement fostered an enlightened and critical view on society and social practices, whereas QS promotes neoliberal individualism.

Nadine Reinhardt, “Work” in Progress. Thoughts on the Change of the Concept of Work Digitization in the working world is a frequently discussed topic in politics and society today. Above all, questions about the impact of digital technologies on work practice and workers are at the center of attention. Less attention is paid to the question of how the cultural understanding of work changes in the face of the emergence of new occupational forms and work structures, although such a change always accompanies the historical development of work. The article, therefore, aims to give some ideas for reflection on the notion of work.

Christoph Wulf, The Formation of the Subject in the Digital Culture. Some Considerations, Hypotheses and Research Results Concerning the Education of Young People In this article I would like to outline four aspects that are important for the education of young people in the digital culture. The first concerns the genesis and

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role of the subject and subjectivity in European culture. The second one develops a hypothesis about possible negative effects of focusing on individualism and subjectivity and relates our topic to the Anthropocene. The third aspect presents empirical research results on how young people deal with digital culture and subjectivation processes. Fourthly, considerations of research into the performativity of gestures, rituals and mimetic learning processes in the context of digital culture are elaborated.

Azimuth is a highly-scientific review headed for an international public, that would be interested in the double orientation of philosophy, as it is conceived by the editors: it is genealogy of problems and themes in the modern Age as well as reinterpretation of them in the present days. This two-dimensional attitude also explains the name chosen, Azimuth, that’s the english translation from arabic term as-sûmut indicating the distance from a point to the plane of reference, which gives the necessary coordinates to determine the position of a celestial body. The aim is to provide the necessary coordinates to guide human thinking through the elaborate, stratified reality of the present days, which requires an intersection of different knowledges and approaches in order to be understood in its complexity. Azimuth è una pubblicazione scientifica di carattere internazionale, attenta alla questione filosofica nella sua duplice vettorialità: rivolta da un lato alla genealogia di idee e problemi nel mondo moderno, e dall’altro proiettata sulla riformulazione e applicazione contemporanea di forme e dinamiche del pensiero. Questa vocazione bidimensionale spiega il nome prescelto, Azimuth: trascrizione inglese del termine arabo as-sûmut, che indica in astronomia la distanza tra un punto e il piano di riferimento, fornendo le coordinate indispensabili per determinare univocamente la posizione di un corpo nella sfera celeste. L’obiettivo è quello di offrire al pensiero, esaminando in numeri monografici i nodi fondamentali della coscienza filosofica e culturale odierna, le coordinate necessarie per un orientamento critico nella società umana, la cui stratificazione rende indispensabile un pensiero a sua volta composito, che non sia solo comprensione ma anche un tentativo di posizionamento nel mondo. ISSN 2282-4863

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