Laying down a path in walking - Angela & Adam

The chapter begins with a restating of the fundamental circularity of cognitive science and human experience.

It then goes into the problem of Nihilism in contemporary Western culture. Nihilism is rooted in (and is a response to) objectivism. When the grasping mind comes to realization of groundlessness, it can in reaction try to turn that lack into a ground itself, or a positive presence of "the abyss". However, given the need for planetary thinking, this is not a viable course. The authors suggest an alternative in the metaphor of "laying down a path in walking".

The philosophy of Nishitani Keiji is introduced. Keiji describes the "field of consciousness" - referring to the objective/subjective model. When we see the ultimate futility of this view, we come into uncertainty - described as "the Great Doubt" in Zen tradition. This leads us to the "field of nihility" - a negative groundlessness (distinguished from Sunyata, or "emptiness").

Nietzche began to deal with this by recognizing the "collapse of fixed reference points", and suggesting that this could be overcome through his notion of the will to power. Nishitani criticizes this view, as will is still dependent on the grasping mind that gave rise to subjectivism/objectivism in the first place. His view is that the Western philosophers recognized the problem but didn't go far enough in the solution. Since our current culture is scientific, science as well must adopt the idea of groundlessness. The authors propose to do this with their enactive research program.

Traditional Western sociology is also dependent on these ideas of subject/object. Specifically, an example is given of Hobbes' despot, or the unrestrained economic man. Planetary thinking requires an embodiment of concern for others. Buddhist tradition describes how emptiness is "filled with compassion" - a positive to Buddhist thinking often unmentioned in the west. As mindfulness/awareness arises, the individual realizes "compassionate action" as an already-present "skill". Normative societal rules should be "informed by the wisdom that enables them to be dissolved in the demands of reponsivity to the particularity and immediacy of lived situations" (p 252), and "sustained, disciplined practice" of mindfulness/awareness on the part of individuals is necessary.

Science + groundlessness = groovy.

Devices and the good life - Sally & Sabreena

Verbeek uses the work of Borgmann to analyze technology as a shaping tool for human existence and in the definition of “the good life”. Borgmann distinguishes between 3 different approaches to technology:

a. substantivism ; autonomous power

b. instrumentalism ; neutral

c. pluralism ; many faceted

Technology diminishes our interaction with the world.

“The introduction of technology was done with the aim of liberating humanity for disease and toil, and of enriching art and athletics.” He argues that our world has come to have a more technological character because our attention is focused on what technology promises rather than social changes it has brought. Borgmann begins by analyzing the relations humans have with technological devices. Devices are entities that fulfill the technological promise of liberation and enrichment. He defines what he calls the "device paradigm”; Device paradigm: a pattern that is the dominate way in which we in the modern era have been taking up with the world.

“Availability – realized by “devices” – what a devise makes available what “commodity”.

The technological approach according to Borgmann consists in the on going replacement of the presents of things by availability of commodity delivered by devices. Technology according to Borgmann has developed into “a definite style of life”, which can be labeled as “consumption”. Consumptions deprive individuals of engagement. (Page 181) Liberal democracy and technology together shape the context in which human begins are invited to organize there existence according to the model provided by the device paradigm. Inequalities exist within social standings thus creating huge disparities in the realization between the rich and the poor.

Focal things promote what Borgmann calls “focal practices” by which he means focal things require engagement.

The social context for existence is shaped by liberal democracy, which defines “the good life” in terms of the consumption of mass manufactured products, which technology has made available in surplus.

On the bases of Ihd’s by his work a tripartite distinction can be made between types of human – artifact relations

• relations of mediation
  
• alterity relations
• background relations

Verbeek goes on to criticize Borgmann's analysis in several ways one in which Borgmann's definition of engagement shifts and from two different views to integrate into each other.Then concludes the chapter by discussing the post phenomenological perspective, which offers a rich and varied picture of technology.

Devices and the good life - Angela & Adam

Borgmann, in Verbeek's view has an improved approach to the analysis of technology's role, because he approaches it from the effects of specific technologies, rather than an abstract and monolithic view of "Technology". He defines what he calls the "device paradigm" - that is a shift from "things", which are inseparable from their context and which require high involvement or effort from humans, to "devices" which have low involvement, are not specifically involved in a certain context.

Devices have the property of providing 'availability' and what is provided then becomes a 'commodity'. People then consume the commodity, which provides the problem for Borgmann. Though technology improves life (i.e. enables "the good life") by making previously unavailable things available, it also promotes this passive, consumptive lifestyle, which prevents engagement with authentic existence, reminiscent of Jaspers. This is Borgmann's "irony of technology" - it promises enrichment but ends up impoverishing.

Technology is heavily implicated in socio-political structuring as well. Liberal democracy, which emphasizes freedom to persue personal realization, is enabled because technology frees people from their self-subsistance. The problem is that the device paradigm dictates that people must still consume, and their freedom is restricted to the manner of consumption, not a choice about whether or not to live the consumptive lifestyle. In addition, technology stabilizes the (class-related) status-quo by promising future enrichment to working and middle classes.

A potential alternative is present to Borgmann in the form of "focal practises" and "focal things". That is, activities which are persued for their own sake rather than as a means to an end, and the specific technologies that enable such. These focal practises enable people to engage with their reality.

Verbeek criticises Borgmann's analysis in several ways: first, there are examples of ways that technology enables engagement that would not otherwise be possible; second, Borgmann's definition of engagment shifts from effort or difficulty to meaningfulness, when the two shouldn't be equated.

Verbeek also points out that the way that technological objects are present to us is not as simple as Heidegger's and Borgmann's binary present-at-hand vs. readiness-to-hand, but since some objects display both properties, these should be seen as opposite ends of a spectrum.

The chapter concludes with a summary of the "postphenomenological vocabulary" that Verbeek is attempting to build - showing how technological objects mediate or translate our perception of the world as well as how we exist in it and interact with it. The picture is rather more complex than describing technology either as a totally autonomous and monolithic force, or as a totally neutral means.

Devices and the Good Life - Davide, Genevieve, Cho, Shih-En, and Amna

INTRODUCTION

- http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/Faculty/Info%20Pages/borgmann.htm

Albert Borgmann is an American philosopher who was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1937.

The University of Montana, where he currently teaches as Regents Professor of Philosophy, contains a brief biographical list of his various works and reviews, as well as contact information.

- It is imperative to know that Borgmann was influenced by Heidegger.

***Heidegger & Borgmann Comparison***

*Both believe that technology plays a role in the human experience.
*Both exclusively examine the negative impact of this.
*Where they differ: Heidegger looked in technological possibilities whereas Borgmann uses concrete technological examples.
*Where they differ: Heidegger describes technology as a way of revealing (Gestell) while Borgmann describes technology as a way of shaping human existence.

For this reason, Borgmann's philosophy of technology can be seen as an extension to Heidegger's.

- Borgmann's work is the center piece of this chapter: Verbeek wishes to show how artifacts help to shape human existence with the aid of Borgmann's studies.


THE DEVICE PARADIGM

- Borgmann claims there are 3 approaches to technology:

(all quoted and found on p. 174)

*Substantivism views technology as an independent power that unfolds according to its own logic and holds society and culture firmly in its grasp.
*Instrumentalism is in many respects the opposite of substantivism, for it sees technology not as independent but as neutral, a mere means for the realization of human ends.
*Pluralism developed as a response to the shortcomings of both substantivism and instrumentalism. It sees technology as the outcomes of complex processes of evolution and interaction in which a play of myriad forces and influences determines which technologies ultimately arise and the forms that they take.

- Borgmann also claims there are problems with these approaches:

(critique on substantivism and instrumentalism on p. 174, critique on pluralism follows on p. 175)

*Substantivism doesn't bother to explain why technology is seen as developing autonomously.
*Instrumentalism assigns a bit role to technology, which makes the explanation unconvincing in Borgmann's eyes.
*Pluralism presents the development of technology in a manner more complex that it actually is. Thus, it is inadequate when attempting to be used as a response to the problems of substantivism and instrumentalism.

- Borgmann wishes to create a better response than pluralism to the tension between substantivism and instrumentalism. He calls his approach "paradigmatic," insofar as he understands technology in terms of paradigms.

- What is a paradigm?


- (Quote found on p. 175)

In Borgmann's view, technology contributes “a characteristic and constraining pattern to the entire fabric of our lives,” a “pattern” or “paradigm” that “inheres in the dominant way in which we in the modern era have been taking up with the world” which he calls the “device paradigm”. Borgmann’s entire philosophy of technology consists of an attempt to bring to light and understand this paradigm inhering in the way in which human beings engage the world.

- Borgmann uses concrete examples of technological devices (television sets, central heating plant, automobiles) to show the pattern/paradigm of modern technology.

- Borgmann believes that although "the pattern of technology is fundamental to the shape the world has assumed over the last three or so centuries, it has gone largely unnoticed." (bottom of p. 175 - 176)

This is because this paradigm came forth during the Age of Enlightenment.

Key points about the Enlightenment: 18th century, goverment stability, nation creation, common people obtaining greater power, nobility/church begin losing power.

As is evident, there were many contributig factors to the idealistic lifestyle of this era, with technology being among them. However, due to technology's "promising character", as Verbeek calls it, it was able to both enhance and hide its transformative power.

- This promise is a key point that was formulated by Bacon and Descartes. They deduced that technology was brought forth with the goal of "liberating humanity from disease, hunger, and toil, and of enriching life with learning, art, and athletics." (p. 176)

Technology was thus originally meant to improve and ease the living conditions of human beings. Verbeek, though, notes that the promise is vague; for example, there is no mention to what degree technology seeks to liberate humanity from its woes or to what extent it seeks to enrich our lives. This means technology's promise could be fulfilled a in a very small, unnoticeable
way.


On the other hand, it is due to the promise's lack of details that technology has been able to continuously grow even further. Technology's promise may bring forth small results, but it is also capable of producing enormous, world-changing possibilities. This limitless potential, though, has had the side effect of turning the attention away from the social changes it is capable of yielding. Ergo, the technological pattern Borgmann describes has not come to light just yet and this has resulted in a new "character of contemporary life."


DEVICES AND THINGS

- Borgmann describes the "technological pattern" in modern life. He begins by analyzing the relation humans have with technological devices.

- Key terms used:

Device: entity that fulfills the technological promise of liberation (from needs and burdens) and enrichment (making things more accessible).
Thing: pretechnological version of a device. Dealing with one forces us to be involved extensively in its world. It cannot be removed from its context.
Availability: a commodity that has been rendered instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, and easy.
Commodity: that which a device makes available.

These four terms describe how a relation between a human and a technological device can produce results: A device makes a commodity available.

- Borgmann analyzes warmth and its availability in an example of how this relationship works:

(paraphrasing example from p. 176)

Warmth. In the old days, warmth was delivered to houses by a fire that burned in the stove or fireplace – it was not “available”. It was not instantaneous (too much work), was not ubiquitous (not all rooms could be warmed in this manner), not safe (you could be hurt chopping or burning the wood and houses could catch fire), and was not easy (work, skill, and attention were always needed). Technologies have made warmth available today; turning up the dial of a thermostat on a central heating system make it so.

Device: Central heating system.
Device availability: Yes.
Thing: Fireplace.
Thing availability: No.
Commodity: Warmth.

- According to Borgmann, devices are capable of delivering a commodity so efficiently due their machinery, which makes up the "background of technology". Although it is not in the limelight often, it makes it possible for a device to function without the need to understand the exact details. Were it necessary to understand every minute detail, the device would cease to be available due to its complexity; this would reduce it to the status of a thing.

(Example found at the top of p. 178)

The ability to tell time from a watch is not dependent on what powers it. The only thing a human needs to understand is that the device is a watch and the commodity it provides is the ability to tell time. Meanwhile, the battery or spring which is powering said watch works in the background and should only become a concern when there comes a time to replace it.

- "The technological pattern consists in the ongoing replacement of the presence of things by the availability of commodities delivered by devices". (p. 178)

As a thing cannot be removed from its context and requires the utmost attention, machinery is given its task and is hidden in the background. This allows us to obtain and enjoy commodities with relative ease. In this way, the device paradigm divides things into commodities and machinery.

- Borgmann believes that devices are not the technological innovations that they appear to be: going by his previous definitions and terms, he believes they promote the consumption of commodities (constant taking) without a form of engagement (ignorance or lack of knowledge of machinery). This is the device paradigm, or pattern, that is mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

- Borgmann quickly concludes that only nontechnological things have the ability to engage human beings and that technological artifacts only invite disengaged consumption. Verbeek believes that devices can indeed promote engagement.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE GOOD LIFE

Borgmann talks about technology and how it has changed the way we interact with the world today.

Technology according to Borgmann has developed, ‘a definite style of life’, which can be

labeled as consumption. (p178)

He says that technology promised to bring fulfillment and enlightenment to the world through commodities. But it is now difficult to see how the consumptive relation to commodities contributes to a meaningful human existence.

Technology has shaped our way of life in such a way or a ‘pattern’ that it now stands in our background to structure the way in which we human being deals with the world.

The replacement of things by device and of engagement with consumption has decreased our engagement with the world to a lesser degree. (p179)

Borgmann states the existence of consumptive behavior by giving example of the couch-potato, a person who spends hours and hours each day watching television. This make him deprived from social interaction as well as from reading a book or going out and having a walk with the dog.

He says that it’s such a paradox to see how technology that promised to provide enrichment provides impoverishment.

Borgmann says that initially technology did protect us with hunger, cold, disease, darkness etc but could some of the modern day technologies come under these characterization of saving or protecting us. He gives example of microwave food, where one has to stand for 20 minutes to get a frozen dinner ready.

Though technologic advancement in the past have saved and have liberated human beings from misery, the new technological innovations nowadays only severe to eliminate our interaction with the world.(p.180)

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND THE GOOD LIFE

Borgmann says it is only the devices that shape the human context but also the way in which they are organized.

He says that liberal democracy and technology together shape the context in which human beings are invited to organize their existence.

Liberal democrative vision of a society gives rise to the idea of freedom, liberty and choice. The same message is given through the power of technology.

An idea of a free and liberated world where everything is made easy for one‘s convinces.

By creating availability human beings can both choose their own means for realizing themselves and make free choices from the available consumable goods.

As Borgmann says “liberal Democracy is enacted as technology” (p.181)

Belief in the promise that technology is the path to deliverance from want and provision of human enrichment by generating availability provides a kind of social and political stability. (p.183)

FOCAL THINGS AND PRACTICES

Borgmann talk about the focal things and focal practices in today’s world.

To him things and commodities can never be equal. One always has to replace the other.

Focal things are the one that invite engagement and draw together human interaction. They result in focal practices, by means of dealing with the world. (p184)

Borgmann’s point of view can be explained by the example of today’s heating system and the traditional fireplace.

In early days homes were kept warm through lighting up fire in the fireplace. The procedure to lit the fire took up involvement of all the people in the house as well as interaction with outside world.

The process started from cutting up the wood to bringing them in the house and then lighting it up in the fireplace. According to Borgmann the fireplace is a ‘thing’, a focal thing.

The fireplace not only brought warmth but also made ones interaction with the rest of the

world. This created a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment which gave rise to a focal practice.

Where as in today’s world, with the invention of the new technology the old fireplaces are replaced by the modern heating systems. Borgmann calls these devices as mere ‘commodities’. By using these devices our interaction with the world and with the people around us, has diminished and is not equal to the interaction and satisfaction that one got through the fireplace.

Borgmann is not calling for us to retreat to prtechnological patterns, but rather to keep technology more at bay, more at periphery of our lives.(p.185)

Devices and the Good Life (Continued) - Davide, Genevieve, Cho, Shih-En, and Amna

BEYOND ALIENATION

Borgmann’s concepts enable the existential dimension of technological mediation to be fleshed out further, but a few critical remarks should be borne in mind. His diagnosis comes dangerously close to the alienation of Heidegger. (p. 185)

The power of Borgmann’s analysis consists in his approach of technology in terms of specific artifacts rather than reducing it to its conditions of possibility, as did the classical philosophy of technology.

The pattern that he perceives as organizing our existence is not something a priori of which technology is the concrete realization. Also, the particular content of this pattern – that the involvements that human beings have with the world are diminishing more and more due to devices – is questionable.

Borgmann claims that technology leads to an impoverished, consumptive existence. But Verbeek argues with the following (p. 186):

· Borgmann’s concept of impoverishment of modern life becomes ambiguous as he develops his opinion.

· Verbeek says that the exclusive alternative Borgmann offers between engagement with non-technological things and disengaged consumption of technological devices is untenable. The pattern that he outlines does not do justice to the role of technology in human existence, however enlightening it is to describe it in terms of involvements.


Two Forms of Engagement

Borgmann claims that devices diminish the engagement of human beings with their environment and invite consumption. The engagement that is thereby lost, according to Borgmann, can be recovered if people devote themselves to focal things and practices.

The engagement of focal things is not described in terms of effort and exertion, but of meaningfulness. Borgmann speaks about focal things and practices in terms of “orienting one’s life” and “realizing one’s aspirations” (p. 187).

But when the engagement that technology causes to be lost is compared with the engagement brought by focal practices, a striking difference emerges between these two kinds of engagement.

There is a distinction between practices that require effort and those that produce meaningfulness, and these are two different kinds of engagement. They can be separated as the following:

· Engagement through pre-technological things with specific goals.

· Engagement through focal practices without any specific goals.

Also, Verbeek says the problem lies not in Borgmann’s concept of relevance or importance of practices that give meaningfulness. The problem lies in Borgmann’s ambiguity in his concept of engagement (p. 187).

He eventually merges the two following statements:

· Technology diminishes the possibilities of experiencing meaning and leading an engaged life.

· Technology diminishes the efforts that people have to expend.

On the basis of Borgmann’s theory via the device paradigm, technology primarily leads to a reduction of effort and only in an indirect way threatens focal engagement. But a device can never be a true alternative to a focal practice because such a practice is never straightforwardly aimed at the realization of an end for which technology could provide a more efficient means (i.e. running a marathon is not for transportation purposes, nor is preparing a large festive meal to satisfy hunger) (p. 188).

If people give up focal practices, they do not do this because they use technological devices, but because they are entirely submerged in the consumptive attitude that the use of devices invites.

Engaging Devices

Technologies generally diminish the amount of effort that is required to obtain goods, but their role in “focal engagement” is more ambivalent.

In some cases technologies even enhance engagement in the sense of effort; however, in the case of the microwave, it has invited a more complex cooking process. And in the case of faster means of transportation, the commuting time has lengthened the distance over which people commute.

Technology can not only reduce engagement but also amplify it. It gives rise not only to disengaged consumption, but also to new possibilities. Consumption can even be better understood by making use of products in which the amplification and reduction of engagement are entwined together in an ambivalent way (p. 190).

Borgmann only acknowledges a single aspect of the implications of technology: disengagement. Technology indeed makes things available, but the lack of human involvement in the process does not mean that humans are not involved in the product.

On the existential and hermeneutical level, technologies can be seen to play an ambivalent role in shaping the human-world relation. Borgmann’s device paradigm only reveals a small portion of the role that technologies play in human existence. Involvement, in the form both of effort and meaning-giving engagement, needs to be treated as a dimension of technological mediation and not as something that technology excludes or renders impossible (p. 191).

MEDIATED ENGAGEMENT

The goal is to translate Borgmann’s analysis to a postphenomenological perspective.
Borgmann’s analyze how human engage with reality in which many actions are mediated by technologies. Therefore, it allows Verbeek to analyze how technology affects how human existence takes shape (p.191).


Devices and Involvement

Technological artifacts mediate perception by excluding certain kinds of actions and promoting others (p.191).

Example: CD player inhibits making music but promotes listening to music.
Also true with patterns of mass consumption created by “the good life” by changing human engagement.

Also true with the environment of the artifacts by changing the activities.
Example: no more need to cut the wood, but use a power mower for cutting the borders of the lawn (p.192).

Analyzing the technological mediation of involvement (effort and engagement).

Three variants of involvement: can concern the artifact (i.e. playing the piano, its environment i.e. gathering and chopping wood for the fireplace, or the product that the artifact makes available i.e. enjoying music with a CD player (p. 192).

Ambivalence of technological mediation is more evident in the third kind of involvement (the product that the artifact makes available) that Borgmann’s describes as “commodities” (p.193).


Involvement and Human-Artifact Relations

Human experience is transformed in the technological mediation of perception and of cultural frameworks of interpretation (chp. 4).

Human existence is translated by the technological mediation of human action and its social context (p.193).

Three types of human-artifact relation, based on Ihde’s work: relation of mediation (human-technology-world), alterity relations (human-technology/world), and background relations (human/technology-world).

These can be further divide between embodiment relation and hermeneutical relation.
However only embodiment relations are relevant in the analysis of the mediation of action. (p.193).

Embodiment relations are the way in which artifacts present in the relations as “readiness-to-hand”.

There is two ways that an artifact can be ready-to-hand: engaged (i.e. does call attention to itself or a disengaged i.e. disappear in the background).

Example: Music with the piano (engage) and the CD player (disengage).

At the same time the piano is neither exclusively ready-to-hand nor present-at-end (i.e. machinery not completely in the background or in the foreground).

Therefore ready-to-hand and present-at-end are the two end point of a line that the artifacts can be position themselves on (p.194).

There is a multiplicity of ways in witch artifacts mediate human-world relations. Involvement can be an “effort” or a “focal engagement”.

Involvement can be with the device itself, its environment, or with the products that makes it available (p.195).


CONCLUSION: THE MEDIATION OF ACTION AND EXPERIENCE

Verbeek has tried to create a critical review of the positions of Ihde, Latour, and Borgmann, to develop a postphenomenological vocabulary for analyzing the mediating role of artifacts. The structure of this kind of mediation involves amplification and reduction; some interpretive possibilities are strengthened while others are discouraged. This kind of mediation can be described in terms of translation, whose structure involves invitation and inhibition some forms of involvement are fostered while others are discouraged (p. 195).

The most important post-phenomenological concepts can be seen on p. 196 of What Things Do.

The post-phenomenological perspective offers a completely different view of technology than the classical philosophy of technology. In contrast to the latter’s fear that technology alienates us from reality and from our authentic existential possibilities, the post-phenomenological perspective offers a rich picture of technology, which does justice to its ambivalent status (p. 196).

While the classical post-phenomenology speaks of technology as involving a loss of meaning, post-phenomenology speaks of transformation of the ways in which reality can be present for humans; post-phenomenology speaks of translation of the ways in which human beings can be present in the world and realize their existence (p. 197).

The value of this postphenomenological makes possible a more careful and thorough investigation of specific technologies. The concluding example for Verbeek is the PDA: it has the ability to reduce the pressure of work, but also can rob people of relaxation.

· During a train ride, it can mediate its user’s pressure from “reading”, “looking at landscape” to “working on one’s text”. It involves both effort and focal engagement: towards its intrinsic value and its original functionality.

· When one writes with a PDA, one embodies and these embodiment relations changes into alterity relations (p. 198).

· The dimensions of action and perception, with the associated reductions and amplifications of interpretations and involvements, are also present (i.e. via PDA emailing). The PDA can mediate one’s entire world. It mediates the relation between humans and world, and thus coshapes their experience and existence (p. 199).

Latour - Angela and Adam

Latour is trying to get away from the duality between object and subject prevalent in Western philosophy and science. He describes the concepts 'human' and 'non-human' and envisions 'technique' as the socialization of the non-human. He sees the traditional relationship between society and technology as a tautology and instead develops a 'genealogy' of sociotechnological development as a swapping of properties between humans and non-humans.

This involves many dependent layers, leading from 'social complexity' - that is, prehumans manipulating each other to survive - to 'political ecology' - in which nonhumans are given full social relations and therefore rights. Each layer is either human or non-human, and each layer also confers human or non-human properties onto the other group. For example, 'internalized ecology' is the stage where domestication and agriculture have occured due to relevant plants/animals and materials (non-human) being fully socialized, or internalized by the the 'society' (human) of the previous layer.

"Latour's universe consists of actors that stand in relation to each other and interact via networks" (p 149). Actors are not to be understood as only human, but any entity that exists in relation with others in a network. Similarly, entities do not 'enter into' relationships with each other, but are defined by them (car example). For Latour, this emergent concept of an 'existance' is more important than a predefined 'essance'. Essence is constructed by the networks of existances.

Latour defines four modes of technical mediation: Translation, in which a program of action (of a human) is transformed or translated by the program of action of another entity (gun example); Composition, in which the responsibility for action is not due to one entity, human or not, but is spread over the network in which that entity exists (hotel key example); Reversible black boxing, where the network blending human and non-human is quite often normally invisible, but that invisibility breaks down when the normal function of technical entities is interrupted (projector example); Delegation and Scripts, where the program of action of an entity is delegated or enscribed into another entity (speedbump example).

(Also, issues of postphenomenology! Asking different questions leads to different answers! We were never modern!)

Acts of Artifacts (Continued) Davide, Genevieve, Cho, Shih-En, and Amna

As Verbeek points out, Latour uses the previous observations to say that the relation between humans and the world in the post-phenomenological view is complementary to the classical hermeneutic view. He does not believe in phenomenology being able to describe the world through words since descriptions themselves are mediated only through a set of words. Though it does not seek to explain empirical reality, Latour’s view does show how human lives can be technologically mediated as well. Phenomenology may be rejected by Latour, but actor-network theory itself is not primarily about the dichotomy of the subject-object, but rather, it is about the emergence of relations between networks. It looks for chains of associations.

However, as sound as they may seem, Latour’s theories should probably not be taken universally. For example, the aforementioned chains are a bit more differentiated than Latour’s post-phenomenological view; according to Verbeek, they should be separated into categories such as presence-at-hand, readiness-to-hand. Another Latourian concept that might be problematic according to Verbeek is delegation since it creates an asymmetry between humans and non-humans, something that is against his main idea of mutual relationships. Rather than being a social constructivist, Latour is simply a constructivist who tries to escape the subject-object dichotomy because of the constant rise of new entities, hybrids that simply cannot be defined under this category. Ironically, as noted previously, it is exactly because they cannot be concretely categorized that they thrive. Perhaps we not only need to analyze our technological culture similarly to how anthropologists study other cultures, as well as through Latour's four meanings of mediation, but also by incorporating other ideas that might fit into a more empirical reality.

Chapter 2.5 - Davide, Genevieve, Cho, Shih-En, and Amna

The relation between “action” and “existence” from the existential point of view are established in the introduction to this chapter, although only the action portion of this discussion is looked at in detail through the work of Latour.

The most fundamental aspect of Latour’s work is that he examines entities dichotomically. For the purposes of this discussion, the entities he refers to are humans and nonhumans, whom are further classified as “actants”. Through Latour’s “actor-network theory”, these actants all stand in relation to one another while emerging and acting equally through a network. However, Latour admits that this theory is not perfect, and those that do not fit into his theory are known as “hybrids”.

Latour goes on to explain how these actants are intertwined with one another. In his example, he uses the example of “weapons kill people”. The conclusion he draws from this is neither the gun nor the person alone kill, but instead it is the gun that affects the person and merely acts as a mediator. When technology such as the gun in the example is called to mediate, it translates a “program of action”, which in this case, is killing. Therefore, mediation can be described as a translation of one action into a new one which is brought forth by the relations that actants (the person and the gun in this example) have with one another. This definition is what allows Latour to avoid a unification of subject and object and instead focus on the blending of humans and nonhumans.

One final point made by Latour is the notion of delegation. As its name implies, this refers to how one actant thrusts responsibilities unto another actant. Although he speaks of delegations from nonhumans to humans, Latour does not indicate them as such, despite their importance to postphenomenology. This perspective believes that a third entity may be responsible for creating relations between actants. Finally, translation is described as being the mediation of the action itself.

Heidegger and Verbeek (Rebecca, Laurence, Andrea and Carina)

The readings discuss technology or technological objects as playing a more meaningful role in our everyday life than we, as humans, understand it to be. Technology’s role in society has become more than words and ideas but a material thing that relays an entire lifestyle; an identity. Techne, or the skill related to the arts and crafts has evolved from the creation of a craft by hand to the creation of a technology through a technology, or in other words, through an object or barrier connecting the “product” with the hands. Regarding this subject, the readings argue that “[…] Changes in our material world is a loss of authenticity” (see Verbeek, 2). If one creates the design and scenario as sketches of brainstorming, but the final product is created through technology to become a modern day craft (i.e. another technology), is this still authentic? Or must each individual use their hands (and perhaps other body parts) so as to have an authentic creation?

The readings also bring rise to the question concerning the individuality of a person in terms of their intimate relationship with technology. Are we like machines and is technology “alienating human beings from themselves and reality”? These questions derive from empirical studies, and so its challenge is to “understand technology not in terms of its conditions of possibility, but in terms of concrete artifacts”. In terms of the previous question, the example; the process of turning on a computer is an auto-pilot function in the human brain (so to speak), and although our movements during this process may at times seem mechanical, we are in no way the machine.

Essentially, technology is more than an object you kick out of frustration or throw away when its usefulness is at an end. There is more to considering the aspect of technology; we need to understand it as a practice (i.e. how people work concretely with things – the human experience).

Heidegger also discusses the aspect of technology revealing itself; as in technology as the tool or cause coming into being with itself, i.e. the process of appearing to us, which in Heidegger’s understanding is not a human activity. The essence of technology is not something technological. This aspect of the readings can be understood from the example of the tree (Verbeek, 49-95).

Angela & Adam: Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"

Heidegger:

Exploring the essence of technology. The 'instrumental' definition of technology, namely that it is a human activity and means to an end is brought up and questioned. Four traditional 'causae' are defined, and it is shown that the one primarily linked to the idea of 'cause' (efficiens), is in fact only one part of an object being created. The craftsperson or artist in effect 'gathers' all the causes in the making of something, thus 'revealing' their natures. In Heidegger's terms, they are 'brought forth into presencing', a poetic process. Poesis is this brining forth into presence, Physis being the bringing forth of something into itself.

Modern technology brings forth in a different way: it is a 'setting-upon', an order to yield something. This is described as 'challenging-forth'. In this mode of revealing, objects are seen not in their nature as objects, but as 'standing-reserve' - containers of potential for action, energy or material.

We ask who is the agent of this 'challenging-forth as standing-reserve', and the obvious answer is humanity. But now we point out that humans themselves are challenged-forth by natural needs into this action. Is humanity therefore also standing-reserve? The answer is no, because humanity is more primally challenged-forth than nature:

"Yet precisely because man is challenged more originally than are the energies of nature, i.e. into the process of ordering, he never is transformed into mere standing reserve."

However, it is quickly pointed out that the 'unconcealment itself', or the context in which this act of ordering takes place is not a human creation, but rather: "he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed. The unconcealment of the unconcealed has already come to pass whenever it calls man forth into the modes of revealing alloted to him."

From this we see that the instrumental definition of technology is untenable, since it is not a strictly human endeavor, nor strictly a means to an end.

We introduce a new term: Ge-stell, or Enframing. Enframing is the mode of revealing that technology engages in. We also discuss the historical relationship between science (physics) and technology. The latter is chronologically after the former, and seems to depend on it. Modern physics, however in its "realm of representation remains inscrutable and incapable of being visualized" is "challenged forth by the rule of Enframing, which demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve". Cause in this case is reduced to reporting of standing-reserves.

Enframeing is described as dangerous since "man ... is continually approaching the brink of the possibility of pursuing and pushing forward nothing but what is revealed in ordering" - "the danger can remain that in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw". In other words, the danger is that we lose the chance to experience the world in its true essence, as everything is seen in terms of its standing-reserve, rather than its nature as object. (Here we have Heidegger's concept of the 'true', regarding essence, rather than the merely factually correct).

The combination of destining and Enframing is regarded as a 'supreme danger', since humans, regarding the world only as standing-reserve, and reduced to being only the orders of such, are in danger of becoming standing-reserve themselves. Humans see the world only in terms of themselves, yet lose all sight of their own essence. Not only this, but it prevents or conceals other modes of revealing (poeisis), and thus truth.

There is also a 'saving-power' which grows in accordance to Enframing itself, and in order to retrieve it, we must understand technology in its essence. We must, in other words, understand all technology by its common essence of Enframing. It is carefully pointed out that this essence lies in its mode of revealing, "having the character of destining, namely, the way that challenges forth", rather than in being an apparatus or tool, or being the concept of such things. When conscious of this essence as Enframing, we can realise that we are "needed and used for the safekeeping of the coming to presence of truth". We can not accomplish this through "human activity", but through "human reflection". Techne, in it's traditional meaning, applied to the practice of arts, since arts were seen as revealing of truth (Poeisis), and it is the essence of art that grants this saving power.

...Verbeek coming soon...

concerning technology(sabreena&sally)

“What Things Do”

Part 1
Introduction: To the things themselves:
The Death of things:

Page1:
Q: What role do artifacts play in our technological cult?

Our every being from birth, travel, eating and so on depends on these artifacts-technological artifacts.

Q: What effects do these artifacts have on us, and how can we understand their role in our lives?

Until recently, philosophers have paid scant attention to this question, preferring to devote their attention to words and ideas, rather than to material things.

People never really focused on material and changeable things, until the linguistic turn.

Page2:
However important the role of language may be, its absolution assures that things and artifacts can no longer be philosophically analyzed and only talked around.

It is only philosophy that has failed to recognize the significance of things and their products are devised principally to serve as signs, rather than material things. That is, as symbols or icons for their owner’s lifestyles.

In an attempt to give artifacts their due, comes the realizations such as lamentations that the loss of materiality is characterized as a form of alienation. Implying that changes in our material world is a loss of authenticity.

Page2:
Technology is represented as a radically transformative power that estranges human beings from themselves, from each other, and from reality itself. Technology culture is seen as transforming human beings into clogs in a social machine, and as transforming reality into a raw material that can only be approached via domination and control.

This is the standard picture of technology that is evident in the work of Karl Jasper and Martin Heidegger, and it has been under harsh critique in the recent years.

The book seeks to undertake a systematic analysis of the relationships between humans and technological objects.

The thing about the philosophy of technology:
Page4:
Classical Philosophy:
Classical philosophy of technology has not devoted enough thought to the role of technological artifacts in contemporary society and daily life. Classical philosophy tends to approach technology in terms of what technology requires or presupposes; the kinds of technological thinking it fosters, for instance, or the principles around which our social life must be organized in order for technology to function in it. If concrete technologies enter into these analyses, it is merely as an illustration of the origins or presuppositions of technology as not as points of denature for investigation into how technologies concretely shape human life.

Classical and empirical philosophies of philosophy:

Classical philosophers of technology have painted an excessively gloomy picture of technology in contemporary culture; by worrying that technology would end up alienating human beings from themselves and reality.

In technological organizations of contemporary social life, human beings no longer appear as unique individuals but only as functional workers needed to keep the highly structured apparatus of mass production working.

Page 5:
Empirical studies have called into question the classical picture of technology as an all-determining and alienating power, and therefore brought to light a more complex side. By researching specific technologies in concrete applications, they have brought to light the fact that technology has different impacts in different contexts, and that technologies do indeed strongly shape the form and the context in which they function.

Empirical studies of technology provide the role of technology in human existence and experience. Its challenge is to understand technology not only in terms of its conditions of possibility, but in terms of concrete artifacts, and to continue to pose philosophical and not merely empirical questions.

The orphic temptation:
Page7:
In a certain sense, traditional philosophy approached its subject matter from a transcendental direction, where transcendental philosophy achieved its zenith in the works of Emanuel Kant, and takes as its point of departure the analysis of conditions of possibility. Presuppositions that are brought to light in this way are not empirically observable, but transcendental; that is they overlap or transcend (they cannot be found in) empirical reality.

Classical philosophy of technology uses this style of philosophy. Where it tried to understand technology form its conditions of possibility, from what must be presupposed in order for it to be passive. It thought backwards that its.

This approach has produced many relevant insights and to a large extent has shaped the understanding of technology and its role in the contemporary culture. But it makes our picture of technology distorted if we look at it from this angle only since we are then speaking about technologies themselves, and the transcendental perspectives become absolutized into transcendentalism.

This was how classical philosophy of technology looked at technology, resulting in the discovery of alienation, as it failed to se that technology presupposes a dominating manner of thinking or functional orientation of social life and does not necessarily imply that dealing with concrete technologies can only produce this domination and functionalism.

Page8:
Classical philosophy met the same fate that befell Orpheus in Greek Mythology. As such it should resist the temptation of looking back.

Technology cannot be reduced without a remainder of what underlies it.

When dealing with technologies, much ore happens than object manipulations. Hence the new philosophies think forward, starting from the technologies themselves, and asking what role they play in our culture and daily lives, instead of reducing them to the conditions of their possibility and speaking abut these conditions as if we were speaking about technology.

Page9:
Gilbert Hottois:

· Belgian philosopher of technology

· Observed tat the phenomenological tradition of philosophy of technology to which Heidegger belonged to was technophobic, his reason being that it filed to notice the unique and radically new character of modern science and technology.

· Phenomenologists conceive technoscience as a particular kind or interpretation of reality and fails to see the operativity, which makes it transcend the realm of interpretations.

Heidegger’s approach should not be considered completely absolute.
Reasons being that:

They have drawn attention to an important dimension of technology; namely the relation between technology and the way in which humans interpret and engage in their world.

This perspective however can be filled in much better with a closer contact with technology itself; which is what becomes possible via an analysis of technology in terms of concrete artifacts. This would describe technology in terms of its concrete presence and reality in human experience and practices.

Towards a philosophy of artifacts
Page 10:
Karl Jasper’s existential approach:

• Emphasizes the idea that technology creates large-scale “mass rule”
• This mass rule fosters mass production, mass culture, and promotes entirely new ways of existence in an entirely new material environment.
• This development brings about the alienations of humans from themselves and the environment hence entails the loss of authenticity.
• His proposition to overcome alienation is that humans need to realize that technology is ultimately only a neutral means for achieving goals they set. Were this to happen, then coming to terms with technology would be seen as a task or challenge for human existence, rather than undermining it.

Martin Heidegger:

• His approach highlights the technological relationships of humans to the world.
• He understands technology as a particular manner of approaching reality, a dominating and controlling one, in which reality can only appear as a raw material to be manipulated

The works of Jasper and Heidegger represent two poles of phenomenological tradition within the philosophy of technology. These being:

• Existential phenomenology
• Central question is how human beings realize their existence and thus are present in their world
• Hermeneutical phenomenology
• Examines the ways in which reality is interpreted and thus present for humans.

Part 2

The thing about Technology”(p49-95)

“The things things”…

The importance where it is clear that technology cannot be understood solely in terms of its conditions of possibility, but it should also be analyzed in terms of concrete artifacts that play a role in the relation between human beings and their world.

Jasper: existential issue of the role technology plays in human existence
Heidegger: raises the hermeneutical issue of the role technology plays in the way human beings encounter and interpret reality.

Heidegger’s philosophy is seen as Monolithic, Abstract, nostalgic by Verbeek
That is it looks at the philosophy of technology by looking backwards rather than looking forward.

Heidegger’s philosophy of technology:
The three stages:
1) Why technology cannot be thought of as a means to an end.
2) Why technology cannot be conceived as a human activity
3) That technology must be understood as the “greatest” danger

Technology as revealing:
What Heidegger thinks according to him is not thought anymore. What does Heidegger mean when he says that technology is not a way of “revealing”. What we call reality is not present the same way at all times and in all cultures. It’s not absolute.
Only in the relationship humans have with entities do these entities become reality for them. The relationship between humans and being is the basis of Heidegger’s entire thought. Heidegger had a distinction between being and beings that was forgotten. Where his distinction was that being meant emerging out of concealment into unconcealment.
This means that technology reveals whatever it does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us. Aristotle distinguishes between four causes of what is responsible for what something is brought into being.
These are:
1) The efficient cause - Bring about the effect that is finished
2) The material cause – The material, the matter of which it is made out of
3) Formal cause - The form, the shape into which the material enters
4) The final cause – The end to which the produced object is put.

Poses the question “ what is the significance of technology for the way human beings encounter reality; and how does it affect the manner in which we interpret the world?”


In Modern technology’s approach to reality, humans no longer encounter entities that emerge from concealment into unconcealment. Reality acquires its identity from what can be done with it.

For Heidegger, this happening or event is the “coming to appearance” or the emerging out of concealment to unconcealment.

Technology as enframing:
Heidegger tries to show that this technological way of revealing is not a human activity.
Human beings only gain access to reality thanks to the meaning that being has in the epoch (period/era) in which they live in.
The Gestell (enframing) is the fall of unconcealment, the way of “being” of reality, that holds sway in the period of technology. This form of unconcelament brings to presence whatever is revealed as standing reserve.
In the Gestell, the essence of technology is to be found. This is very important. Essence however is to be understood as a verb, not as a noun.

Technology as the “Great Danger”
The Gestell he claims is to be seen as danger.
Q: But what is so dangerous about technology?
A: Humans will misinterpret the unconcealed.

He gives two reasons for this:
1) It threatens humanity itself
2) When the Gestell hold sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing

Heidegger’s way out of this danger, through the saving power, “where danger is, grows / the saving power also”, that is where the saving power is seen as an open way for a possibility of a way out. This is why the essence of technology must be thought of as a verb; it is not what technology is, but how technology is present.
Heidegger reflects towards a particular attitude and behavior and a comportment, which is to be adopted to technical artifacts in order to make the saving power possible. He names this comportment releasment.
The dilemma that Heidegger wants to resolve through the notion of releasement is that technology imporivishes their relation to reality, while on the other hand the use of technology seems inescapable.

Releasement can be seen as essential reflection.

When human beings allow themselves to be swept away by technology, it is then that they become alienated from the world.

Abstract and monolithic:
Heidegger’s transcendentalism:
Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is seen as too general, since it declares modern technology as a stage in he history of being and therefore leaves no room for the developments of alternative practices. The reason according to Feenberg that leads Heidegger to lump together agricultural techniques and atomic bombs is that he sees technology “merely as different expressions of the identical enframing”. That is how Heidegger looks at technology as a form of world disclosure, as opposed to looking at specific technologies of our world.

When Heidegger speaks about technology he means not specific technologies, but rather the Gestell. This makes his work of necessary abstract in the sense that he abstracts from the specific technological practices. Heidegger overlooks important aspects of technology. That is because he sees technology as an expression of ascending of being. He reduces concrete technologies to the ascending of being that forms the condition of possibility. Human beings can only await and prepare for the arrival of a new sending of being, but cannot bring it about.

Q: Should we follow Heidegger in his claim that the Gestell is the only form of concealment of our world?

When they are used, technologies may make it possible for human beings to have a relation with a reality that is much richer than those they have with a manipulable stock of raw materials.

Philosopher Gilbert Hottois has argued that technology is characterized not only by the fact that it depends on an interpretation of reality, but also by the fact that it intervenes in reality. Meaning that it is not adequately understood if it is grasped only in terms of interpretation because this reduces it to the domain that it actually transcends.

Technology needs to think forward rather than backwards in the modern world. Then technology will not appear as a form of alienation from the “full richness” of reality, but as a form of mediation of the relation between human beings and reality.

Nostalgia:
Don Ihde says that Heidegger’s descriptions of traditional and modern technologies are colored by the romantic thesis that traditional technologies are preferable to modern technologies. According to Ihde, Heidegger is selective in his descriptions not only according to traditional technologies, but of modern technologies as well. Heidegger contrasts between two ways of disclosing reality; a standing reserve and as fourfold, where fourfold is the world as it is gathered by earth and skies, divinities and mortals. These four components form the dimensions that open up the realms through which human beings experience the world.
In a word, Ihde’s critique boils down to the fact that Heidegger’s nostalgia rests more on romance than on argumentation…

Verbeek critiques Heidegger’s nostalgia by stating “when analyzing traditional artifacts he uses an ahistorical perspective, while he approaches modern technologies using a historical perspective.

One can be nostalgic only when one thinks that something essential has been lost, and that becomes problematic precisely when one thinks historically, for then something can only be essential within a historical context.

Heidegger’s understanding of modern technology in terms of alienation in which something ordinary gets lost would not have been possible without applying a double standard.

Heidegger’s develops his two standards in two different contexts; the historical standard and the ahistorical standard. (p74)
Measures tradition and modernity with different scales, when he speaks about traditional technology, he does so in ahistorical terms; when he speaks about modern technologies he is a historian.



Heidegger and Things

Heidegger’s earlier work in Being and Time:
This view analyzes the role of equipment in the relation between human beings and their world. Instead of reducing the relation between human and world, technological artifacts generate specific forms of access to the world for human beings.

Heidegger’s philosophy of “being” changed (77)

Tools as providing access to the world
“Being in the world”
What makes a tool are piece of equipment what it is, is that it makes it possible to practice.
Human beings do not focus on the tool or piece of equipment they are using, but rather on the work in which they are engaged. The more aware the tool is the more difficult it becomes to do something with it
Tools shape the world
Things in short Disclose a world

CH9 - Carina, Rebecca, Andrea, Laurence

Like the church of Computationalism Neo-Darwinism has long ruled over the field of evolutionary studies. This theory minimizes certain phenomena in favor of the idea of natural selection and reproductive fitness abundance & selection pressures. however, there are flaws in this way of thinking. The first of theses is genetic interdependence: the interconnectedness of genetic expression (following the trend of emergent properties). Second is the self-organizing process during embryonic development. Thirdly the randomness and existence of junk DNA. Fourthly selfish DNA and stasis.

Emerging from the dissatisfaction is a modification to Darwinism which describes a sort of drift along the previous defined path of natural selection. There are two steps which scientists must take in order to accommodate this new idea. The first is the switch from prescriptive logic to proscriptive. The second is to view evolution as a process that satisfies a need rather than optimizing a solution for it.

Upon taking these steps we can adopt the diea of natural drift: 1) self-organization of a genetic network 2) genetic networks work to satisfy trajectories 3) expression is the result of the network 4) environment and organism trigger changes in DNA. In order to have these changes, three conditions are involved: 1) capacities of the self-organizing network 2) interactin bewteen subnetwork modules 3) mode of structural coupling. We are again reminded that the environment is not a world which we happen to stumble into but something in which we have a relationship with. The encironment seems to co-evolve with organisms (chicken & egg). The world is enacted.

We return to cognitive science often establishing enaction of the world. We can begin to see trends in which cognitive performance occurs. In order to determine where enaction takes place we must look within the layers of activities and intelligence to further understand implementation. We see these layers working on their own while at the same time together to give rise to emergent properties. And that the domain in which this occurs is not fixed but dependent on biological needs, the most viable path.

Chapter 9 (Sally & Sabreena)

Neo-Darwinism

Evolution as a natural drift:Linkage and Pleiotropy; presence of a gene does not result in isolated trait (few exceptions such as eye color), provides difficulty for adaptation.
Genetic Interdependence;How genes develop is from "within" or internal factor, not external
Statio; group of species that will survive over a long range
Unit selection- Structural coupling; between the environment and the actual species. The ideal situation is not to take the optimal design but to take the satisfactory design. One creature will die out based on there optimal design for that environment.

Evolution by nature can be articulated in four basic points. (p196)
1. The unit of evolution network capable of a rich repertoire of self- organizing configurations.
2. These configurations generate selection, an ongoing process of satisficing that triggers change in the form of viable trajectories.
3. The specific mode of change of the unit of selection is the interwoven result of the hierarchy of sub networks.
4. The opposition between inner and outer causal factors is replaced by a co implicative relation.
"Enactive" (p206)
Structural coupling is the term for structure determined engagement of a given unity with either its environment or another unity. The process of engagement which effects a history either its environment or another unity. The Process of engagement which effects a history or recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence.
Two key points; optimal and Viable.
Optimal: the ideal state of a certain object. Viable; does what is needed to survive successfully (does not have the notion of idealism.
Brings us to the notion of intentionality; focuses on the structure of a system. (p206)
Enactive Cognitive Science (p205)
"Representation is the wrong unit of abstraction in building the bulkiest parts of intelligence system"
"The goal is not the usual decomposition of a system by functioning, but rather by activity" (p209)
Thus we are a product of out environment.
Brooks’s model of artificial intelligence; different set of subsystems, hierarchy structure.

Varela – Chapter 9

Evolutionary Path Making and Natural Drift

The adaptationist stance

Adaptation (or Neo-Darwinism)

Adaptation is the centerpiece of evolutionary biology, just as representation is the centerpiece of most contemporary cognitive science

Neo-Darwinism:

• Evolution is a gradual modification of an organism by heredity in reproduction
• The heredity constantly diversifies (mutation, recombination)
• Natural selection is the mechanism that picks the optimal design

Modifications by small changes in heredity -> genes

Evolution = the totality of these small changes in interbreeding populations

Adaptation is the process linked to reproduction and survival = adapting

Evolution

The main task of evolution is to find sets of interrelated genes that can contribute to reproduction

If it improves reproduction, it improves its fitness

Fitness

Fitness as a measure of abundance (the effect of genes on the growth rate)

Problems:

• reproductive success depends on sexual encounters (in most animal groups)
• the effects of genes are intertwined, it is hard to pinpoint the effects of individual genes
• the milieu in which these genes act is varied and time dependent
• this milieu must be taken in the context of a life cycle and ecology of the animal

Fitness as a measure of persistence (probability of reproductive permanence over time)

The optimization is not the amount of offspring, but the probability of extinction

This approach is sensitive to long-term effects, but has the same measurement problems

Adaptationist stance

The process of natural selection is the main factor in organic evolution

Selective pressures act on the genetic variety of a population, producing changes over time according to an optimization of the fitness potential

Evolution as natural drift

“Evolution as natural drift is the biological counterpart of cognition as embodied action, and therefore also provides a more embracing theoretical context for the study of cognition as a biological phenomenon.” (p. 188)

Linkage and Pleiotropy

Presence of a gene does not result in an isolated trait (few exceptions, eye color)

Genic interdependence:

• the genome is not linear array of dependent genes
• it is comprised of a network of multiple reciprocal effects mediated through:
• repressors and depressors
• exons and introns
• jumping genes
• structural proteins

Punctuated equilibria:

• discontinuities in how species change over time
• transitions are global rearrangements involving cooperative effects and genetic exchanges
• intermediate forms in species cannot be imagined (no grey zone)

Pleiotropy provides difficulties for adaptatationism:

“Selection might push to decrease the frequency of a certain gene, but pleiotropy, on the other hand, might push to increase or maintain the gene. The net result is some compromise that cannot be described as simply the result of selective pressures” (p. 189)

Development

The development stage is as important as the final structure itself

Pattern formation and morphogenesis (shape/creation) are highly constrained cellular choreographies that delimit the possibilities for change

The larva model demonstrates that once again, emergent properties are important in a complex network

These emergent properties are referred to as intrinsic factors

It is important to not consider natural selection as being external and developmental constraints as internal, they are not opposed

Random Genetic Drift

It is widely recognized that there is a significant degree of random genetic drift

The source of this randomness is:

• Proximity of genes (the hitch-hiking effect)
• Sampling error (from generation to generation) read p. 191
• 40% of the genome is junk DNA (not expressed and repetitive)

Stasis

Groups survive with little change even though their environment changed drastically from our viewpoint

“Genotypic plasticity, which is at the base of evolutionary stasis, is also evident in the microbial world where constant genetic exchange occurs side by side with an astounding degree of stasis.” (p. 192)

Considering adaptation as a measure of abundance (because of this stasis) has nothing to do with long term survival

Makes more sense to approach adaptation as a measure of persistence

Units of Selection

The individual has been considered the only unit of evolution and selection

Theories including multiple levels or units working in parallel are plausible and explain phenomena that couldn’t be explained with single unit selection

Single unit:

• genes

Multiple units:

• DNA short sequences
• Genes
• Whole gene families
• Cells
• Species genome
• Individuals
• Groups of genes carried by different individuals
• Social group
• The interbreeding population
• The entire species
• The ecosystem of the interacting species
• The global biosphere

Beyond the Best in Evolution and Cognition

“To explain an observed biological regularity as an optimal fit or optimal correspondence with pregiven dimensions of the environment appears less and less tenable on both logical and empirical grounds.” (p. 193)

Evolutionary and cognitive issues coincide in 2 points:

• adaptive value of knowledge, explains the kind of cognition a species has today
• evolution is used as a source for theories and concepts in cognition

Representation in cognitive science is like adaptation in evolutionary theories, because optimality is the central point in both

The john buying a suit analogy brings up the point that a global situation needs to be considered

(p. 194)

Ecology and Development in Congruence

First step:

Switch from a prescriptive to a proscriptive logic

What is not allowed is forbidden to what is not forbidden is allowed

Natural selection in a proscriptive logic works in a modified way:

Selection discards what is not compatible with survival and reproduction

This opens the idea of a variety and diversity of evolution paths and biological structures

Second step:

Evolutionary process is satisficing instead of optimizing

Putting together parts in complicated arrays, not because it is the optimal design, but because it is a possible design

This again opens the idea of a variety of evolutionary paths

Evolution as Natural Drift (the authors point of view)

Four points (p. 196-197):

• The unit of evolution is a network capable of many different configurations
• Under structural coupling with a medium, these configurations generate selection, an ongoing process of satisficing that triggers change in the form of viable trajectories
• The specific trajectory is the interwoven result of multiple levels of subnetworks of selected self-organized repertoires
• Organism and medium are in a coimplicative relationship, they mutually specify each other

This view needs the applicability of these three conditions:

• Self-organizing capacities in biological networks
• Structural coupling
• Subnetworks of independent processes that interact with each other

The notion of the pregiven background is replaced by intrinsic factors

Richard Lewontin (p. 198)

The species brings forth and specifies its own domain of problems to be solved by satisficing

Living beings and their environment relate through mutual specification or codetermination

Environmental regularities are the result of a long history of codetermination

The organism is both the subject and the object of evolution.

Defining the enactive approach

Ontogeny: the development or developmental history of an individual organism

Phylogeny: the development or evolution of a particular group of organisms.

Structural Coupling: Structural coupling is the term for structure-determined (and structure- determining) engagement of a given unity with either its environment or another unity. The process of engagement which effects a "...history or recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems" (Maturana & Varela, 1987, p. 75). It is ‘...a historical process leading to the spatio-temporal coincidence between the changes of state..’ (Maturana, 1975, p. 321) in the participants. As such, structural coupling has connotations of both coordination and co-evolution. (http://www.imprint.co.uk/thesaurus/structural_coupling.htm)

Cognition is no longer seen as problem solving on the basis of representation; instead, cognition in its most encompassing sense consists in the enactment or bringing forth of a world by a viable History of Structural Coupling. (p.205)

Such histories of coupling are not optimal (best or most favorable), but rather viable (capable of surviving or living successfully under certain environmental conditions).

Any action undertaken by the system is permitted as long as it does not violate the constraint of having to maintain the integrity of the system and/or its lineage. (p.205)

• There is always a next step for the system in its perceptually guided action
• The actions of the system are always directed toward situations that have yet to become actual.

Intentionality:

• Intentionality includes how system construes the world to be
• Intentionality includes how the world satisfies or fails to satisfy this construal.

Implications of this Intentionality:

• We can focus on the structure of the system by describing it as composed of various subsystems.
• We can focus on the behavioral interactions of the system by describing it as a unity capable of various forms of coupling.

What is Cognition?

Enaction: A history of structural coupling that brings forth a world. Through a network consisting of multiple levels of interconnected sensorimotor subnetworks.

It would be considered adequate when it either becomes part of an ongoing existing world (as the young of every species do, or shapes a new one (as happens in evolutionary history).

Enactive Cognitive Science

Brook’s “Intelligence without representation”:

Representation is the wrong unit of abstraction in building the bulkiest parts of intelligence system. (p. 208)

The goal is not the usual decomposition of a system by functioning but rather by activity. (p.209)

Activity: Pattern of interaction with the world. Each activity can at least post facto be rationalized as pursuing some purpose. (p.211)

Layer: activity, producing subsystem.

There need be no distinction between a “perception subsystem,” a “central system” and an action system.”

There are no representations involved in the layers of Brooks’ Model.

Paul Smolensky’s Harmony theory:

• Exogenous (derived or developed from outside the body) features in the task domain corresponds to pregiven features of the world
• Endogenous (growing or developing from within) activity in the network acquires through experience an abstract meaning that optimally encodes environmental regularity.

The enactive program requires that we eschew any form of optimal fitness by taking this kind of cognitive system into a situation where endogenous and exogenous features are mutually definitory over a prolonged history that requires only a viable coupling. (p. 213)

ch.9 - adam and angela

Chapter 9 - Evolutionary Path Making and Natural Drift


Neo-Darwinism remains the dominant mode of thought in evolutionary biology, characterized by notions of natural selection shaping development of species through selection. The idea of fitness in the evolutionary sense is usually expressed in terms of abundance (the number of offspring, or rate of growth of a population), or persistence (probability of extinction). There are several points of contention with this model, namely: Pleiotropy (genes are interdependent, making it difficult to discuss adaptation of individual traits); punctuated equilibria (drastic discontinuity and global rearrangement in the development of species); the importance of development (morphogenesis) of individual organisms; the fact that many groups remain genetically static for long periods of time (despite changing environments); and the many candidates for what the unit of genetic selection should be.

"The central issue remains whether evolutionary processes can be understood by the representations idea that there is a correspondence between and environment provided by the optimizing constraints of survival and reproduction"(pg.193-194)

The idea of organisms adapting to a pregiven environment (which is parallel to a cognitive system representing a pregiven, external world) is called into question, and a switch from optimization (prescriptive) to satisficing (proscriptive) is suggested. Selection is not the central agent of change, forcing development into a specified optimal path, but a pruning method by which multiple paths are kept viable. In this model, environment and organism specify each other in an ongoing enfolded process. In parallel, the role of Enactive Cognitive Science research is to understand how the mechanisms of structural coupling unfold and how regularities in environment and cognizing systems arise.

"..living beings and their environments stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or codetermination"(pg. 199)

"nature versus nurture will actually to go away unless we learn to see organisms and environments as mutually unfolded and enfolded structures."(pg. 199)

"...intelligence shifts from being the capacity to solve a problem to the capacity to enter into a shared world of significance."(pg. 207)

An example is given in the research of Rodney Brooks – who states that representation is the wrong unit of abstraction for intelligent systems, that we must incrementally built up intelligent capacity, that each step should build a complete intelligent system with real sensing and real action, and that the proper mode of viewing perceptive and active subsystems is through orthogonal division - division by activity rather than function. That is, there is no distinction between peripheral and central systems.