Notes on Coleman: Race as Technology

Beth Coleman’s (2009) “Race as Technology” in Camera Obscura 70, V. 24/1.

177 “moves race away from the biological and genetic systems that have historically dominated its definition”

177-178 “I argue in this essay that technology’s embedded function of self-extension may be exploited to liberate race from an inherited position of abjection toward a greater expression of agency. In this case, agency indicates presence, will, and movement—the ability to move freely as a being—and it is not restricted to individuals but also includes systems: it concerns how beings are subjected in systems of power, ideology, and other networks.”

—- “liberate race from an inherited position of abjection” how can we understand that inherited position, and is it related to a psychoanalytic notion of abjection?

178 “For the moment, let us call ‘race as technology’ a disruptive technology that changes the terms of engagement with an all-too-familiar system of representation and power” [Emphasis added].

To consider this, “race…must first be denatured—that is, estranged from its history as a biological fact (a fact that has no scientific value perhaps, but constitutes, nonetheless, a received fact).” 

Here Coleman cites UNESCO’s 1952 dismissal of race as a legitimate category for scientific inquiry…its clarification (many times confirmed and elaborated since) that race is not a genetically determined concept; that the racial status “black” for example is conferred inconsistently, as are other notions of “Asia,” “Africa,” “Orient,” “Near/far/middle East,” “Balkan,” or even “Native,” in relation to perceived or desired boundaries of narrative for white ethnicity. 

Stuart Hall: white ethnicity’s boundaries are always necessary formations underlying the description of racial categories, but they remain invisible from the equation.

Robert Fiske: whiteness deploys power via “exnomination,” a process that removes or reduces any mark of Anglo- or N/WEuro- identity, “unnaming” that identity, through the naming of other identities. Unnaming whiteness confers on it a status of universality in relation to particulars.

BUT, the stakes of this conversation aren’t limited to concepts and identity particulars, and Coleman’s argument about race as a physical tool helps to strengthen that point:  “Imagine a contraption with a spring or a handle that creates movement and diversifies articulation. Not a trap, but rather a trapdoor through which one can scoot off to greener pastures. As an object of history, race has been used as a contraption by one people to subject another. An ideological concept of race such as this carries a very practical purpose. It vividly and violently produces race-based terrorism, systems of apartheid, and demoralizing pain.”

“[No break?] A notion of race as technology, however, moves toward an aesthetic category of human being, where mutability of identity, reach of individual agency, and conditions of culture all influence each each other.”

182 “In aspiring to disinterest in an object that has been so terribly interesting for us, we can dislocate race from its historically embedded status as a de facto biological object. Creating a distance from the inherited logic of race, conceptualizing race as technology enables an aesthetics and an ethics of race: an agent can judge the strategic value of one mode of representation over another.”

BLC: But wait, haven’t we been confronted for decades now in the US with a theatre of disinterest from race? Isn’t that what proposition 209 is? How does Coleman aspire to this kind of empirical, quasi-anaesthetized view of race as a social construct, when the (various kinds of) invisibility of the construct are precisely what empower it? (See Fiske, Hall, above.) Is this really a radical move? (Open question.)

199-200 Coleman answers: “In asking the reader to consider race as technology, I…participate in the critique of racial instrumentalization, but in a fashion that exploits the nature of technology toward the human and the affective as opposed to toward dehumanization. Paradoxically, I engage terms such as denaturing and disruption to reach this goal of removing race from an overdetermined history of lack and toward a revaluation in productive difference. I engage a similar double gesture in linking disinterest (a quality that is neither embedded nor exclusively subjective)…with delight (a quality of pure affect)…

What is that “double gesture”? Coleman passes Kant through the lens of her own thinking in two different refractions simultaneously: first she asks us to consider Kant’s notion of judgment and disinterest as a foundation on which to wonder whether:

1.  How is our judgment of racial difference conditioned by aesthetics of “interest” or “delight” in the Kantian sense? 

2.  How does Kant’s consideration of interest and delight in the process of human judgment make use of racial difference as a tool?

3. [Possible implicit third dimension: Coleman, a woman of color, at least temporarily pretends to be “disinterested” in Kant’s exploitation of racial difference through a racialized “contortionist subject.” The disinterest is hilighted by her earlier declaration of the personal, and even violent, stakes of the conversation … which she has suspended in her academic exploration of Kant.]

***

184 “Perhaps this ‘light subject’ portends a metaphysics of race, in which race and technology are linked not to settle human limits but instead to explore human thresholds. Occupying such a position of mobility is not without its risks… Being in flux can be much riskier than knowing one’s place, even if that place represents the lowest level of society.”

189 “The mechanism of race…is not a metal or wood contraption, but rather a thing that functions systetmatically…it is not a thing itself but an array of procedures…”

194 “What [Gregory] Bateson’s (1972) question [‘is a blind man’s cane part of the man?’] points to is a fundamental shift in Western conceptions of autonomy: the human subject, in a cybernetic system, is always set in relation to other kinds of agents, such as machines.”

Neutrality: A Theoretical Limit with Great Importance (Heller Response to Coleman)

Philosophically speaking, does neutrality exist? Can one be neutral? Are humans capable of neutrality? Can we even perceive neutrality if it exists? Or, are we a species that is inherently biased, so therefore, we cannot see neutrality, even if it were neutral. If one is to argue that nothing is neutral, one must then ask, “at what point in its construction (or among its parts) was it ever in a state of neutrality?” Unless one can rewind a state of a thing to a point where it was “neutral,” then we have a paradox: one must start with a state of neutrality in order to evolve to non-neutrality.

In Beth Coleman’s article on Race as a Technology, she proposes that technology is neutral when she says, “the ability to render results rests with the maker, not with the tools.” She further asks the reader to consider that “race” – the human tendency to discern between peoples based on physical, cultural or historical characteristics – is merely a tool by which humans can do either good or evil. That is, we employ a neutral tool called “race” to draw dividing lines for purposes whose results are not neutral.

I personally agree with that disposition, but not for the reasons she argues. And these reasons avoid concerns down the logic chain that Coleman otherwise leaves unresolved. What does Coleman think people will do differently now that they think of race as a neutral tool? Will we suddenly become enlightened? Introspective of our true natures? That we will change our behaviors? The fact is, the concept of race evolved because it served a purpose, and unless people understand that fundamental process, and prescribe a new approach or methodology for analysis, we will simply recreate the same mindset. In short, we’re going to misuse the tool, irrespective of its neutrality.

It is correct to think of neutrality as a tool, and Coleman correctly cites many great thinkers and philosophers that pose compelling arguments in favor of trying to think neutrally. Their rationale is rooted in the logic that doing so avoids problems of ambiguities and differences of opinion, taste, and deeper matters when observing events in the world. If we can see things objectively, neutrally, then we can agree on the state of things so we can then make better sense of the world and deal with it properly.

Coleman seeks to attribute race as a tool because technology’s inherent neutrality puts the onus on humans to accept full responsibility for how we employ the tool. If the tool is biased, then it allows us to evade responsibility for our actions. So, as long as we regard race as a neutral tool, which it may or not actually be, we are more accountable for our actions.

And it is here where Coleman’s prescription falls short. While it’s entirely appropriate to regard race as a neutral tool, that’s just the beginning. Humans cannot merely move towards the center of anything; they’ll just pass it right by and swing to the opposite extreme – it serves as a proportional counter-weight against an imbalance. Dictators often win popular support through rhetoric against the prior dictator. Smokers find alternative “vices.” Over-eaters become anorexic. And so on. The problem with Coleman’s advice is beyond merely regarding race as a neutral tool. There’s the preponderance of human behavior that must be accounted for.

The concept of race is a byproduct of a broader, natural, instinctive human condition: We categorize and classify things in order to make sense of the world, to create order from chaos. This process allows us to create symbolic and abstract lines and boundaries around things in the analog world into discrete and ordered structures: Land borders, colors, good and evil, and of course, peoples. We must build shelter, defend against enemies, and mate to perpetuate the species. To survive, we don’t need to actually stop and ponder, “Is that person really trying to hurt me?” “Is that wind really an angry god?” “Is this sickness really a sign of the devil?”

We were certainly able to survive with incorrect knowledge, and this inherent, base instinct to over-simplify and categorize the world permitted this. But, we were also static. And this did not change till the scientific method was introduced. It was the main revelation that forced people to think in terms of neutrality: the world can be examined from all sides, tested, theorized, and evaluated. These are very different methods than emotional reactions to observations in the world. We strove to observe the world from a position of neutrality, even though it is against our human natures to do so. It is us that we strove to be the neutral tool, not just the tools we used.

The value of neutrality is that it allows for a better, more informed understanding of the world, despite our natures to react viscerally. And an informed understanding is a circuitous spiral around an idea. It is circumspect: Viewing a postulate from all sides, willing to question one’s own position, eager consider opposing views, all while gaining the weight of knowledge, which spirals towards the middle: neutrality. It is that extreme, theoretical limit that we cannot reach because, as much as we may try (and we should), we are still a non-neutral, emotional, biased species. Those qualities are what we need to live and enjoy life.

Yes, “race” is a tool and it is neutral. But the underlying problems will not be addressed unless humans themselves are taught to seek self-neutrality: To objectively seek that middle ground where knowledge and understanding is obtained through perpetual acquisition of knowledge. 

Dewey Dewey Dewey

UNPULSER: and abbreviated manualAdditive rhythm is rhythm whose timespans are made of multiples of a basic (usually small) unit of time, that serves as a micropulse or a beat subdivision.

Algorithms working off rations.  Rational but random.

Graphic elements are in circle, ratio’s are the timing.  Gravity has impact

Time is running around in a circle

50% that there will be note

smaller circles are less complex

larger circle have more complex/ ratios

Compulse, expectancy in music

Pulse-repeating patterns, unpulse nondisclosed repitition.

Importance of Ambigouity, rhythm

Rhythm- series of events

Pulse-

Ambiguous- no narrative,

empirical philosophers,

Dewey Dewey Dewey,

Dewey 1^st half of his article focuses on the idea experience, which he defines as those situations or episodes. He says there is no stopping of an experience, only pauses. The theoretic formulation of the process connects our experience to a human cognition. An experience can be efficient in action so much that the human is not conscience of the experience.  Involuntary or propriocentric. He states these as overdoings.  An experience can be theoretical or esthetic which he defines as appreciative, perceiving, and enjoying.  It denotes the consumer’s rather than the producer’s standpoint.

Experience is unique

Experience as emotional:

Emotional event as opposed to shock. I was very interested in this aspect of his writing as it pertains to my work.  The first film that I directed last fall is a short thriller where I designed the set, costume, and the performance to enhance a feeling of panic or terror, This film is the first of a series of five films the first film being the opener to the audiences emotions.  I felt that fear could allow for this opening in using both shock as well as memory triggers.  Dewey states that the emotional event is different than shock and that “ the jump of fright becomes emotional fear when there is found or thought to exist a threatening object that must be dealt with or escaped from. “

NOTES-blc "Persuade Into What..." (Fallman) — Borgmann overview

Fallman, Daniel (2007). “Persuade Into What? Why Human-Computer Interaction Needs a Philosophy of Technology.” In Lecture Notes in Computer Science.” 4744/2007, pp 295-306.

2.2   Borgmann’s Focal Things and Practices

Borgmann is Heideggerian/dystopian/romantic (rather than pragmatic/Deweyian)

“Borgmann suggests that we need to be cautious and rethink the [engineering-like, design-oriented, “usefulness”] relationship—and the often assumed correspondence—between what we consider as useful and what we think of as good in terms of technology” …(Fallman quoting Borgmann:) “One the one hand, ambulances save lives and so are eminently useful; on the other hand, cars save us bodily exertion and the annoyances of fellow pedestrians or passengers and are thus, at least in part, a threat to the goods of community and our physical health in the form of exercise” [14, p. 21].

“This junction between the useful and the good—that some technologies may be both useful and good, while some technologies that are useful for some purposes might also be harmful, less good, in a broader context—is at the heart of Borgmann’s understanding of technology.”

Focal things are signified by “Commanding presence, continuity with the world and centering power”; 

p303

e.g. a hearth, which aside from its functional relation as heating and/or cooking, maintains cultural and symbolic focus as a “natural gathering point around which most activities were either centered or in some way related to.”

Commanding presence— puts demands on us, entrains “patience, endurance, skill…resoluteness”

Continuity with the world— it “connects us with other activities”; (Fallman quoting Borgmann:) “a focal thing is not an isolated entity; it exists as a material center in a complicated network of human relationships and relationships to its natural and cultural setting” [14, p. 23]

Centering power— it “comes to affirm the place where one lives and the direction of one’s life; …provides a centering experience, …” develops over time a sense that “this is the right thing to do and the right way of living.” 

Focal things “tend to unify means and ends. Achievement and enjoyment are brought together; so are individual and community; mind and body; and body and world.”

2.2.1   The Device Paradigm

“Nevertheless, according to Borgmann, the understanding and appreciation of the role of focal things and practices seems to have disappeared from modern technology. It seems that the latter is rather guided by another kind of promise:” (Fallman quoting Borgmann:) “Technology … promises to bring the forces of nature and culture under control, to liberate us from misery and toil, and to enrich our lives. […] implied in the technological mode of taking up with the world there is a promise that this approach to reality will, by way of the domination of nature, yield liberation and enrichment” [1, p. 41].

“…we are typically not freed up at all by technology but rather made passive—and if we are freed up it is only to have time for more technology. In this downward spiral, we become consumers, increasingly disengaged from things and from each other.”

“modern technology, propelled by the advances in information technology, tends to operate to deconstruct things and reconstitute them into devices, which contributes to the style of modern life being short of a natural center, a hearth,…” (Fallman quoting Borgmann:) “In this rising tide of technological devices, disposability supersedes commanding presence, discontinuity wins over continuity, and glamorous thrills trump centering experiences” [14, p. 24].

Fallman quoting Borgmann re: the irony of technology: “The good life that devices obtain disappoints our deeper aspirations. The promise of technology, pursued limitlessly, is simultaneously alluring and disengaging” [14, p. 31].

NOTES-blc "Persuade Into What..." (Fallman) — Ihde overview

Fallman, Daniel (2007). “Persuade Into What? Why Human-Computer Interaction Needs a Philosophy of Technology.” In Lecture Notes in Computer Science.” 4744/2007, pp 295-306.

2.1.1

“Ihde, who has “repeatedly insisted that the materiality of technologies be maintained” [8, p. 26], holds that if one absorbs techniques—as certain ways of practice and thought—into technology that tends to yield technology as an overly general and abstract term 

p299

Advantages to “giving prominence to human-technology relations” are (1) it enables distinction between technology and technique (see above quote); (2) helps overcome “often suggested and presumed” neutrality of technologies and (3) facilitates “the possibility of preserving in one’s analysis the dynamic and actional nature of that relationship. Even though technologies are artificial, it is nevertheless important to realize that they are part of human praxis; used, designed, developed, repaired, discarded, and so on.”

p300

“…three basic kinds of relations between humans, technology, and world”:

1. embodiment relation [users embody a praxis; involves transparency or ‘seeing-through’-ness; (Human—Technology)—>World.]

2. hermeneutical relation [users’ focus is on instrument and its mediation, requires constructed meaning or interpretative skill; Human—>(Technology—World)]

3. alterity relation [quasi-otherness (less other than people, animals / more other than inanimate objs.); seeming ‘life of its own’; world is de-emphasized context or background; Human—>Technology—(—World)]

1. Embodiment relation 

“First, in the discussion on the non-neutral and mediating role of optical technologies it is noticeable that eyeglasses for instance allow their users to embody their praxis through the technology,” = existential relationship.

“For a technology to hold an embodiment relation it must also be technically transparent—its material or physical characteristic must be such that it allows ‘seeing through’.” — [BLC: again, Fallman’s is a visual metaphor, but unnecessarily restricted to optics (with the nod to aurality with “hearing aids and the like”…). The magnifying capacity of audio microphones, amplifiers, and speakers, are often idealized in terms of their role of being between perceivers and perceived ‘as though not there,’ even as they magnify(/amplify). If a seemingly “non-transparent” deployment of a technology seems to be a circumvention of its idealized purpose, then embodiment is among the standard relations precipitated by the technology.]

FORMALIZATION: According to Ihde, the embodiment relation between a human user, technology, and the world can be formalized as: (Human—Technology)—>World.

2. Hermeneutical relation

Distinguish optically magnifying technologies from others: both are still mediators, appearing between human and world, however “…in the latter case, the user’s perceptual focus is not on the world but on the technological instrument itself”

“The hermeneutical relationship is hence referential, in that it places the user’s immediate perceptual focus on the technology in between the user and the world.”

p301

  FORMALIZATION: The instrument is only transparent in a hermeneutical sense if the user has acquired the skills necessary to be able to read it. This relationship may thus, according to Ihde, be formalized as: Human—>(Technology—World).

3. Alterity relation

“The difference between this human–technology relation and the two previously introduced is that it is…primarily a relation to or with technology”; not mediated, or referenced; however “a form of quasi-otherness [in?] relation to technology that in at least some limited way seems to take on a life of its own:…” e.g. a spinning top, BLC: ‘the ghost in the machine,’ “there is the sense of interacting with something other than me, the technological competitor. In competition there is a kind of dialogue or exchange. It is the quasi-animation, the quasi-otherness of the technology that fascinates and challenges.”

p302

FORMALIZATION: One of the interesting characteristics of the alterity relation is however that the world remains a deemphasized context or background, as the relationship is primarily a relationship to or with technology. Ihde formalizes the alterity relation as: Human—>Technology—(—World).

NOTES-blc "Persuade Into What" (Fallman) — introduction

Fallman, Daniel (2007). “Persuade Into What? Why Human-Computer Interaction Needs a Philosophy of Technology.” In Lecture Notes in Computer Science.” 4744/2007, pp 295-306.

p 295

“a number of conceptual frameworks and associated methodological approaches have recently been proposed as post-cognitivistic alternative approaches to HCI that would be aimed towards and better suited for capturing various aspects of interactive experiences. These include ethnography and ethnomethodology [15, 3], phenomenology [3, 16], distributed cognition [6], and activity theory [13].”  

“These researchers tend to be interested in the relationship between user and artifact in terms of for instance that relationship’s affective qualities rather than efficiency; meaning rather than various performance metrics; fun and playability rather than error rate; and sociability rather than learnability, and so on.”

p296

“‘five E’s’ of usability, i.e. that designs should be effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn”

“What is a good persuasive interface? One that persuades one more or one hat persuades one into something good? Who is to decide?”

p297

Re: John Dewey and Martin Heidegger — “Both regard technology as central to modern life, where Dewey holds a largely optimistic outlook towards modern technologies, while Heidegger comes to develop a more dystopian view.  This basic utopian/dystopian divide is still visible within the field of philosophy of technology. In Thinking through Technology [12], Carl Mitcham distinguishes the engineering strand in philosophy of technology, which seems to assume the centrality of technology in human life, but also the humanities approach, which is more concerned with technology’s moral and cultural boundaries.”

“From his analysis, Ihde proposes a magnification/reduction transformation to be a structural feature: ‘For every enhancement of some feature, perhaps never before seen, there is also a reduction of other features. To magnify some observed object, optically, is to bring it forth from a background into a foreground and make it present to the observer, but it is also to reduce the former field in which it fit, and—due to foreshortening—to reduce visual depth and background’ [9, p. 111].

“…Ihde takes this argument further by arguing that even seemingly unobtrusive and ubiquitous technology, such as eyeglasses, have this non-neutral mediating character.”

p298

Optical technologies [he means perception technologies?] seem to be a special ‘enhancing’/’amplifying’ category—distinct from buttons, levers, etc. — but I’m not sure even the term “perception” encompasses the range of enhancing technologies. What about motors enhancing speed & power? What about weapons enhancing violence and its capacity to harm? What about musical instruments that enhance control over intonation, agility, range, and timbral variety?

“If looking through a telescope is a matter of sensory perception—amplified ‘seeing’ in some sense—using speedometers and clocks may be better thought of as a matter of ‘reading’. A world object is still being referred to—i.e. in the case of the speedometer the referred-to object is typically the speed of the vehicle—but the way it is referred to is not perceptual but rather translated into some 

form of hermeneutic representation.” Goes on to say that technologies of hermeneutic representation require a constructed frame of reference for their meaning or value; thus they are also non-neutral.

Having an experience

Catalina Giraldo

“An experience” is one in which the material of experience is fulfilled or consummated, as for example when a problem is solved, or a game is played to its conclusion. For Dewey “life is a collection of histories, each with their own plots, inceptions, conclusions, movements and rhythms. Each has a unique pervading quality” (57).

For me “an experience” is something that always is deeply connected with all the body, with every cell and organ and directed by the brain and nervous system as the director of an orchestra. But one experience is always heading for the emotions, because an individual’s state of mind is interacting with biochemical (internal) and environmental (external) influences. And it is associated with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. Motivations direct and energize behavior, while emotions provide the affective component to motivation, positive or negative.

The basic emotions are being happy, excited, tender, scared, angry or sad. And the body is answering to these states of mind and being. In this way, we as artists can create emotions through an artistic experience, and sometimes the audience after the experience can change forever.  I mean after have an experience one person can see objects or life different, moreover an artist is able to show another realities that anybody was able to see before.

So I wonder “how many realities we can experience”? First, I believe that we can experience many realities depending on how our emotions are and second, if we are awake or if we are sleeping and dreaming. Otherwise, we can dream when we are awake but also we can dream when we are sleeping.  So if we are artists “should we be able to create art as an aesthetic experience giving freedom of some emotions and giving a message with this creation”?.  

Work cited

John Dewey. “Having an Experience,” (Ch. 3 of Art as Experience). 1934

Dewey Response (Dan Heller)

Dewey draws attention to several factors of human nature in his dissertation on “An Experience”.

First, he establishes the premise that “An Experience” is one that has reached completion. Dewey even cites a staircase as an example, where the experience of climbing the entire series results in a singular, emotional and physical phenomenon that is not experienced with each iterative step. Indeed, the outcome is so discrete from the iterative process that, as Dewey says, “An experience is a unity that gives it its name.” His example of having dinner is such that we iteratively identify and bring into focus important characteristics from that occasion, which combine to qualify that particular experience as unique.

This is not to suggest that Dewey is unaware of the iterative steps that lead to the completion of the task, from which “an experience” has been realized. Rather, it is our interest in the food, or the conversation, or the venue that draws our attention to the dinner. We take them all in, and then select or reject aspects that may contribute or detract from the bias we form. “One quality or another stands out sufficiently that characterizes the experience as a whole.” Upon completion, we then name it: that dinner.

Dewey’s appreciation of the aesthetics is his basis for establishing how we experience art. We perceive the aesthetic qualities of the materials that make up an art piece, which forms the gestalt “experience” – as opposed to an intellectual experience. “It is one reason why the strictly intellectual art will never be popular as music is popular.” In fact, Dewey goes so far as to suggest that “no intellectual activity is an integral event (an experience), unless it is rounded out with this [aesthetic] quality.” Otherwise, it is merely an automatic action, a task, or routine act that we would not identify as “an experience.”

With this as a functional truism, Dewey then dissects the appreciation of art into two discrete experiences: one from that point of view of the perceiver, and that of the artist. For the artist, the creative act itself is a unique perspective that also creates its own experience. Here, he describes “the action and its consequence must be joined in perception,” stating that artists own perceptions of self cannot be filtered out of their gestalt “experience” the way the viewer can filter out the artist.

Here, philosophers ask, “Can humans possibly view the universe the same way God created it?” Dewey would say no.

This disposition ironically clashes with that of Empiricism, which states that the acquisition of knowledge is absorbed through our senses. The irony is that “empiricism” implies “experience,” but Dewey regards experience as a gestalt, whose meaning transcends the iterative actions that comprise it. He states, “This relationship is what gives meaning.” It’s his use of the word, meaning, that moves his theory out of the realm of Empiricism and into Idealism (“knowledge held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind.” – Webster’s).

For me, Dewey’s portrayal of art goes beyond the fundamental questions of the intentions, responsibilities and expectations between the artist and the viewer (like that of humans and The Creator). He asks whether it’s even possible for the artist and the perceiver to ever share in the same experience. Can there ever be an expectation for the artist to evoke his or her emotional meaning from the viewer? We believe that artists successfully communicate and replicate their own emotional interpretations to viewers, but is it really taking place? Or, are we filtering for the bias we seek to justify?

Empiricism/Rationalism

Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience as Arts, while Rationalism is the principle or habit of accepting reason as the supreme authority in matters of opinion, belief, or conduct as Science.

In this way, I believe that in general Science is still today a rationalist following the scientific method since the 17th century, and consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. The scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. Although, much 19th century physics (a science example) has been re-evaluated as the “classical limit” of quantum mechanics, and its more advanced developments in terms of quantum field theory, string theory, and speculative quantum gravity theories.

Since my experience I consider the Science also empirical, because in Biology -the study of life- you are an observer able to recognize the taxonomy of plants or animals or in my own case, pollen grains, first following intuitions, remembers or hunches and then comparing with the collections and taxonomical keys to confirm the results. In fact, some biologists I now are rationalist but at the same time empirical artist -musicians, painters, photographers etc.-, and many physicians/mathematicians from 17th century were musicians, lecturer in literature and monks like was Galileo or alchemist and mystics as was Newton, who after death the Royal Society kept for more than two hundred years a baggage with books about alchemy, personal interpretations about holly writings, and historical chronologies, that he read and transcribed to handwriting¹.

That is interesting and very connected what Williams James set out: “The metaphysical view most commonly known as neutral monism, according to which there is one fundamental –stuff- that is neither material nor mental. In -A Pluralistic Universe” he defends the mystical and anti-pragmatic view that concepts distort rather than reveal reality, and in his influential Pragmatism (1907), he presents systematically a set of views about truth, knowledge, reality, religion, and philosophy that permeate his writings from the late 1870s onwards”.

To conclude and following a thought from a biologist friend: “Science is not formal logic — it needs the free play of the mind in as great a degree as any other creative art. It is true that this is a gift which can hardly be taught, but its growth can be encouraged in those who already possess it.”

¹ Verlet Loup, La malle de Newton. Editions Gallimard, 1993.

Derek's Fallman exgesis

What is the usability of a technological device? Should it be limited to functional and rational ends of effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to use criteria, Or must we now consider ethics of presentation and the repercussions of replacing previous modes of expression and utility in our lives. 
Main modes are expressed to define the ethical quagmires and framework of our human technology relationship to the world and two each other (inter-social and human->machine)Don Ihde’s theory holds that technology has no neutrality.
Technology transforms experience, as water on glasses biases the vision. a child limited exposure to keep bionic implant devices safe.
A human with a gun certainly changes the relation that human will have with the world around him. Technology is transformative in the macro and micro context it allows us access to and inversely blinds us to the normal scale we usually consider.
Desensitized to technology we see through it without a distinction between ourselves and it
“taken within my own bodily experience” An interesting blur of the distinction between glasses “actional” and speedometer “hermeneutic” levels of technology interface is augmented reality ipad games. Its just a screen that is in no way the see through surface of prescription glasses. but somehow the speedometers of facebook information can pop up and augment registered objects with the visual field of some overlay apps.
Actional
(human->Tech)->World
Heumenutic
human (tech->world)
Alterity relation
human-> tech-(-world)
THis is the cool one when you attack a computer because it lost your word processor information. Or trust to a machine to accomplish a goal and almost think of it as a trusted familiar that would never betray you but only do as you command, Whats your computer’s zodiac sign? I’ve certainly had some love hate relationships with my cars.

Albert Borgmans device paradigm is a pessimistic theory about the removal of focal principles and foundational enduring objects in our life swapped out for commercial, commodities that separate and isolate our original intentions and requirements from our tools and methods of self maintenance. Focal things like the hearth had many social and survival roles in early human living, THings like electric blankets, and central heating systems remove original focal objects from our life separating out our needs into commodities without much intrinsic worth. Wood-> fire-> warmth->family turned into job->gas bill->pilot light switch->warmth->family. 
Disengaged from isolating and disposable interaction with these alien commodities we become passive and separated from original “natural” forms and human means.
Alterity is otherness of the thermostat compared to the fireplace. Of a video game compared to a human chess player. We experience out machines as a sort of passive human being that models our behaviors to follow suit.

I enjoyed this reading and am interested to consider ethics of technologies integration into human activities and lifestyle as a dangerous decline and vastly productive acceleration of our capabilities.

Aesthetics & Process

“Like “theory,” knowledge is a semiotic entity, consisting of clear, simple signs that stand in for a chaotic abundance experience and reality. What determines the signifier? When does a scientist declare the emergence of knowledge? No matter how empirical her process, the declaration of success in the process is an aesthetic declaration. The aesthetics isn’t merely a problem at the level of journalists and magazines and the public who read them; it begins with the scientists’ statement “it is time for the next experiment” or “it is not yet time for the next experiment.”

What makes that judgement aesthetic? To me it seems the production of knowledge in the scientific sense is wrapped up in politics: who gets the grant, which board has money to spend on what projects, what board gets funding by what administration, who do you know, how good are your connections. The declaration of success doesn’t seem so much aesthetic as pragmatic, especially in the realm of cutting-edge research (which would seem to be the field most heavily involved in discovery, rather than verification). The next experiment is declared when the funding arrives. The end is reached when knowledge acquired can stand up to rigorous peer-driven critique, or the experiment is over when losses are cut and the researchers must move on or suffer professional loss—either material or social.

“it is essentially a mosaic philosophy, a philosophy of plural facts […] neither admitting into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude any element directly experienced […] the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as ‘real’ as anything else in the system.”

What if we instead say that there is no object, and that really all we have is conglomerations of process? Processes acting on processes?

why then my soul was prophetic, and my idea must be, and by common consent would be, called cognizant of reality. That percept was what I meant, for into it my idea has passed by conjunctive experiences of sameness and fulfilled intention. Nowhere is there jar, but every later moment continues and corroborates an earlier one.”

Just a fancy way of saying scientific predictability? How can one completely know anything? One can predict certain aspects of things accurately through knowledge, but other aspects of the thing known can be incorrectly apphrehended, such as with Newtonian physics and general relativity. There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. In James’s system I feel like I understand the process, but I don’t understand how it has end. Is he treating only with discrete statements? When we reach the end of a certain thought then knowledge can be proven or disproven about that object based on my predictions? It seems too that what would be more accurate is to say that each object has domains of knowledge associated with it that we target through thought and speech, but we never encapsulate everything about the thing itself, only those details that are useful to us at that moment. In the example he brings up with the hall in giving directions, he never mentions that it has windows. But he knows it has windows. Why doesn’t he mention it? Because it’s not useful to the communication he’s engaging in at the moment. It’s probably also assumed by his audience that the building has windows. If we take that stance of utility and apply it back to the cognition, that seems plausible to me. I may know more than is immediately apparent even to myself about a certain thing, but unless utility demands I engage it on that level, then it’s more efficient to let that lay dormant until needed. However, I may have my pre-conceptions challenged or overthrown, in which case that knowledge will have been proving ill-based. I felt like there were a lot of territories in James’s argument being filled with other things I don’t know about, so I have probably mis-interpreted something. But one thing this did also bring to mind for me is the idea of Object-Oriented Ontology, which at first blush appears to be how objects exist independently of conscious observation, and that their relata are distorted by each other in a manner equal to observational distortion, even in the absence of a conscious observer. That makes me wonder how it could be used to complicate this. Perhaps some sort of indelible situational context.

“To continue thinking unchallenged is, 99 times out of 100, our practical substitute for knowing in the completed sense.”

Fallman, Borgmann, Ihde

Persuade Into What? Why Human-Computer

Interaction Needs a Philosophy of Technology

 Daniel Fallman: Persuade into What?  Why Human-Computer Interaction Needs a Philosophy of Technology.

This article brought up so interesting points about HCI and why it is relevant to have a philosophy in place to understand its impact on humans.  This idea of having a philosophy with technology in itself is quite important with the immersion of computer softwares into our society.  It is as if they just appeared and started to manage our budgets, edit our photos, and interact with our social lives.  It is something that we need to be conscious of understand the psychological effects that these computer interruptions created in our daily lives. With that in mind I would like to refer to the article and touch upon a few of the points that were brought out by Fallman about the philosophies of both Idhe and Borgmann on HCI.

IDHE’s philosophy is to understand the persuasive natures that are being implemented in HCI’s to manipulate humans into acting in a predictable manner.  For instance he brings up the example of a HCI that influences the computer user into instant buying.  He states that these technologies are non-neutral because they all come with a consequence.  His examples were odd in the fact that they were so expansive starting with the idea of optical technology and the invention of glasses.  Glasses are non-neutral because they impact the wearer by altering the wearer’s site, and possibly the wearer’s actions.  He then goes on to speak about hermeneutic representation in technologies which means that the technology is text base like measuring tools or the speedometer in the car.  Many software’s are also Hermeneutic in nature but they also have alterity relation with humans in that though most of the software is understood there is an otherness that makes it seem like it is magic or from another world.

Borgmann has also a somewhat dystopian view of HCI with the argument that there is no focal thing associated with modern technologies.  He uses the example of the fireplace as being a once focal thing in country houses where all action took place.  The fireplace is where the family gathered for warmth, and cooked meals.  The fireplace needed to be maintained, by cutting wood and keeping the fire going. It also connected the user with the environment in that it needed wood as its fuel and signified seasonal change with the amount of its use.  He compares the fireplace with central heating saying that because the user has a passive relationship with this technology by simply turning it on that he or she does not have any other in depth connection with the device or with the elements that surround it.  In fact the mechanics are hidden so the user in most cases has no idea even how it works.  He then goes on to say that technology needs to be defined between whether it is good or useful.  Many of the technologies today are developed as devices to be consumed and then disregarded and trashed.  This use of technology has developed a dis-connect between what the user expects to what is actually produced.  Because of this it has created isolation between the individual with the community as well as with the individual with humanity.

Beyond Culler & Butler: Why The Post-Modern Epoch isn't so Modern Now

In relation to both the problems & the subsequent definitions which arise from the former, Jonathan Culler’s attempt to lengthen the dialogue on which “issues” are “crucial” to “theory” (although he specifically notes “theory” within the realm of literature, theory will be, in this response, reflexively/briefly used within the context of digital/non-traditional art) his decision to paraphrase specific bits of Judith Butler’s “performative” definitions of gender is, perhaps, a fairly effective buttress towards his own investigations as to what a performative piece of art entails

 

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When he implores the reader that “… the relation between what language does and what it says” is “… the basic problem of the performative”, his interpretation of Butler’s (one of many) definition(s) of what the female gender is —-  a continuously open-ended, evolving entity which does NOT depend on set, concretized, literal definitions which are wedded to patriarchy-based mores —- may be useful towards understanding what art (in this case digital art) can/could be, versus what it is/should be

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Furthermore, when he questions the possibility of a “… harmonious fusion of doing and saying ” and whether such fusion presents “… an unavoidable tension that governs and complicates all textual activity”, he is ultimately questioning the validity of the current milieu we are mired in, the age of mass media; specifically, he uses the example of television viewers’ rigid belief in what happens on the screen, deeming such belief as something that “happens period” —- a belief that is a “… model of the performative” which toxically offers a demonstrative “… blurring between fact and fiction” 

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Whether or not we are in the age of mass media is unquestionable, but this particular part in Culler’s text may be arguably outdated, considering his text was published in 1997 and his definition of our postmodern epoch does NOT consider the internet as THE dominant medium of communication; additionally, within the same token, one can easily argue that the Internet’s domination contributes to the possibility that perhaps blurring fact & fiction has become a non-sequitur

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In other words, in this post-post modern age, where the saturation of media has unanimously invaded humans’ consciousness & attention spans, fact & fiction may have negated one another & have thus, in confluence, birthed a new form of narrative which relies on the imbrication of reality & virtuality —- an imbrication which can only be validated by how many Facebook “likes” it procures 

James/image/interface (holly)

In reading William James’ description of the continuous relationship between experiences and the experiencer there exists an interesting notion that in order to fully experience the real the experiencer must also be able to understand and experience the discontinuity or “disunion [in order] to make our merely experienced disjunctions more truly real.”  The dialectic of discourse is inherently given to this notion of opposing relationships which rely upon one transition of experience to another.  It is the form of these relationships that I find the most problematic.  In artistic practice how do we apply this to form? Does the separation and the disunion that James talks about act as magnetic fields of discourse in which the image is the mediation of these paths of discontinuity?  

I find this very interesting and have found myself searching for the metaphorical image appropriate to James’ philosophy.

I find a correlation between this dialogue with the text entitled “The World as Power: Power as Matter.”  This text is a study of Vedantic philosophy through the lens of scientific and rational empiricism written by Sir John Woodroffe in 1923.   Woodroffe writes about a modernization of Hindu philosophical and spiritual achievements of thought whose “general tendency is now towards some form of radical monism as a result of greater and greater co-ordination and unification of sciences and of science with Philosophy and of Philosophy with Religion.”  He then points to dynamism as the essence of matter which is not said to be “merely occupying space but essentially dynamic with mobility as its fundamental trait.”  Woodroffe puts forth a similar set of cognitive relations between the knower and the known similar to those of James:

“All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full.  Either the knower and the known are:

(1) the self-same piece of experience taken twice over in different contexts; or they are

(2) two pieces of actual experience belonging to the same subject, with definite tracts of conjunctive transitional experience between them; or

(3) the know is a possible experience either of that subject or another, to which the said conjunctive transitions would  lead, if sufficiently prolonged.”

Woodroffe puts forth these two stages in the experience of perceptual matter:

“(1) The original, intuitive, alogical experience of Matter apart format he incidence of the thought-forms: this is Matter as we actually feel or apprehend it.

(2) Then we have that original datum of experience as treated by the Subject with his thought-forms: this treatment giving us what we believe, think and describe as the Matter of our perception.”

In trying to tie these texts together I am struck with the desire to find the IMAGE that seems to be lacking in the rhetoric.  Both James and Woodroffe describe the IMAGE as a sort of intermediary point between experiences describing what is perceived within the mind’s eye of one individual and another.  These two individuals cannot be certain that the shared experience of ideas and formations of relations between themselves are actually real until the image has been terminated through the act of experience through knowledge.  What you see and what I see are obviously different things.  But the search for how this is rendered in artistic form is intrinsically important to the discussion. 

In James’ philosophy on these experiences I find it very difficult to “see” any forms other than through language and space.  His writing is evocative of musical composition in which our experiences are made possible through movement through language, a step to step, letter to letter, voice to voice etc… Is the voice of the human being, the search for music, for sound the ultimate experience that human bodies are capable of experiences as shared knowledge?  Is music an art form quite different in origin that other visual art forms? 

Jacque Ranciere discusses some interesting ideas regarding these questions in his book, “The Future of the Image.”  He discusses Adorno’s aesthetic notions of the separations and differences between the “verbal, plastic, sonorous” or other art forms and how the rationality of their existence is  separated by a bond and a difference in communication.  “Therein artistic modernity represents the conflict of two separations or, if one likes, two forms of incommensurability.  For the rational separation between spheres of existence is in fact the work of a certain reason — the calculative reason of Ulysses which is opposed to the Sirens’ song, the reason that separates work and pleasure.  The autonomy of artistic forms and the separation between words and forms, music and plastic forms, high art and forms of entertainment then take on a different meaning.” 

And suddenly this is all starting to look like an airport to me.  An airport wherein travelers of knowledge or ideas and experiences are constantly be routed between one destination or terminus to another without an actual end in mind.  Whether or not these experiencers and experience bodies actually relate to one another in any actual meaningful way is difficult to say.  And here they go,  in groups and but as individuals, across large expanses of space in which other experiences are creating continuous relations.  The airport is the main metaphor that comes to mind.  A bastion of hope, business, fear, and most of all through commodity.  The commodity of the exchange of bodies of experience is termed a “hub.”  A hub of experience which brings me to the exchange of ideas through technological interfaces. Without these interfaces how does the discussion abut the experiences between the the known and the knower take place?

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Another quote in Woodroffe’s book if you feel compelled to read more:

“Scientific or conceptual matter as now understood in the West is reduced to electrons and protons or units of electric charge which again are, according to some, strain forms in, and of, an ultimate substance or Ether, and which in any event are forms of Universal Energy. But what we objectively perceive as Energy is subjectively Will….What we cal Matter is then the Self as its own object.  The Self is subject and the Self is object.  The object or matters is not, as in the case of the limited centre, something other than, outside of, and separate from, the subject….Matter then is eternal, though it has two forms as seed and fruit.  The seed is tendency iin the supreme and infinite Reality to appear as Matter to the finite centre.  The fruit is that tendency realized as Matter and the Mind which experiences it.  It always is as the power to become of Being, and recurrently exists as that Power manifested as psychic, vital and physical Energy in the form of Mind, Life and Matter.”

“The World as Power: Power as Matter,”  Sir John Woodroffe

James, Dewey / Having Experiences, Having Ideas

When you log in, a charcoal-black button called “post new entry” emerges just above and to the left of this post. Post reading responses below regarding the William James, John Dewey, and Fallman readings. You might consider commenting on some issues that arise for you in considering the nature of empirical thought. What is the role of experience, as opposed to “ideas,” in your own epistemology? What are our cultural values around science technologically-aided or empirical research, and how do they hinge on assumptions about experience and reason?

If you have thoughts regarding Haraway, Kurianawan, etc. that you think pertain to some of these questions, feel free to post them here as well as in the Haraway, Kurianawan reading response thread.