Don Ihde A Phenomenology of Technics Team Black

Don Ihde & A Phenomenology of Technics Team Black William Carroll Jeremy Leader Emily O’Connor Tiffany Smith STS 5305 Philosophy in Science and Technology April 6, 2020 1

Overview 2 • Who is Don Idhe and how do you pronounce his last name? • Background & Education • Influences • Body of Work • Detailed Synopsis of A Phenomenology of Technics 1 • • Section A, Technics Embodied B, Hermeneutic Technics C, Alterity Relations D, Background Relations 1. Idhe, D. (2009) “A Phenomenology of Technics” in Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Kaplan, D. M. (Ed. ).

Background & Education 3 • Born in Hope, Kansas in 19342 • Enthralled by evolution in grade school 3 • Undergrad at University of Kansas • Grad school at Andover Newton (M. Div) and Ph. D at Boston University 3 • Chaplain at MIT during grad studies • Retired as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SUNY at Stony Brook 2. https: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Don_Ihde/ 3. http: //figureground. org/interview-with-don-ihde/

Influences 3 4 • Husserl and Heidegger • Paul Tillich (Harvard) and Harvey Cox • George Berry (Quine student) • philosophy of language • John Lavely • Paul Ricoeur • dissertation figure • Erazim Kohak • phenomenology • Bert Dreyfus http: //www. gettyimages. co. uk/detail/newsphoto/portrait-of-theaustrian-naturalized-germanphilosopher-and-newsphoto/141555173

Body of Work • Over 20 books, starting with Technics and Praxis in 1979 • Considered first North American work on philosophy in technology 2 • Led Techno-Science Research Group Seminar at SUNY at Stony Brook 3 • Earliest articles were analyticphenomenology comparisons, often around language/perception themes 3 • New concepts • Techno-realism • Material Hermeneutics • Postphenomenology 5

Detailed Synopsis of A Phenomenology of Technics 6 • Section A, Technics Embodied • Section B, Hermeneutic Technics • Section C, Alterity Relations • Section D, Background Relations 1. Idhe, D. (2009) “A Phenomenology of Technics” in Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Kaplan, D. M. (Ed. ).

A Phenomenology of Technics • “The task of a phenomenology of human-technology relations is to discover the various structural features of those ambiguous relations [of humans and technology]. ”

Technics • “I shall often use the term ‘technics’ to suggest human action employing artifacts to attain some result within the environment. ” 1 • “Technics is the symbiosis of artifact and user within a human action. ” 1. p. 12, “Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth, ” 1990.

Technics Embodied 9

Technics Embodied • (I-technology) world • Embodiment relations: “because in this use context I take the technologies into my experiencing in a particular way by way of perceiving through such technologies and through the reflexive transformation of my perceptual and body sense. ” 10 Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Features of Embodiment Relations • The technology is between the seer and the seen; transparent • Structural features of embodiment • Both simple and complex technologies • Apply to different senses • Not using it in relationship to non-mediational/direct experience • Technologically relative • The technology must “fit” the use • Can be romanticized

“The doubled desire” • A wish for total transparency & a wish for transformation • All technologies are nonneutral – they change the basic situation 12 Image from Screen. Rant. com

Ambiguity in embodiment relations • Simultaneously magnify and reduce what is experienced through them • Technological trajectory is horizontal • Reflexive bodily point of reference

Hermeneutic Technics 14

Hermeneutic Technics • I (technology-world) • Hermenuetic: “A special interpretive action within the technological context…calls for special modes of action and perception, modes analogous to the reading process. ” • Maintain mediation position, but change the variables Photo by Abhi Sharma

Reading and Writing • Reading is of a text • A specialized perceptual praxis • Writing is a technologically embedded form of language • Inscription/process • “an embodied hermeneutic technics”

Attribution: Kelisi Charts to words… • Example: a navigational chart • Isomorphic and somewhat similar to looking at the landscape, referring to it • BUT the perceptual focus is the chart itself • Contrasted with embodiment technologies: • one sees through glasses • One sees the chart as the visual terminus, the artifact itself • Printed text: • No isomorphism and less “transparency” • “Textual transparency is hermeneutic transparency, not perceptual transparency”

…to thermometers • A cold winter day • You can “see” cold out a window • You can read the temperature on a thermometer, NOT through a tactile embodiment relation, but through a text (hermeneutic) • A constituted immediacy • A hermeneutic relation is a “referential seeing, which has as its immediate perceptual focus seeing thermometer”

Enigma Positions Embodiment Relations Hermeneutic Relations • (I-technology) world • I (technology-world) Enigma position

Cautions and Clarifications • Transformation across differences between text and referent • Not all connectors are material • Not only contemporary or Western

New Trajectories • Vertical – not intending to be purely analogous but enhancing undiscernible differences along a trajectory • Polarizing glasses to cut glare • To infrared • To a visualized abstraction • To mathematical or digital data University of Chicago Library

Alterity Relations 22

Alterity Relations 23 • “Alterity” is borrowed from Emmanuel Levinas. • “Levinas poses the otherness of humans as a kind of infinite difference that is concretely expressed in an ethical, face-toface encounter. ” • Ihde uses alterity to describe “positive or presentential senses in which humans relate to technologies as relations to or with technologies, to technologyas-other. ” Untitled (1923) - Lino António Photo by Pedro Ribiero Simões CC BY 2. 0

Anthropomorphism 24 • Artificial Intelligence characterized as human-like • Fondness for "technofacts" (e. g. , old cars) • Sacred idols "KITT" by Ewen Roberts CC BY 2. 0 "What-is-artificial-intelligence" by Dinesh Rathva licensed under CC BY-SA 4. 0

Spirited Horse vs. Spirited Car 25 • Both give a magnified sense of human power and analogous experiences of guiding/steering. • Horses obey or disobey. "To ride a spirited horse is to encounter a lively animal other. " • Cars function or malfunction and require "the deistic intervention of turning the starter to be 'animated. '" "Horse Show" by Man Alive! CC BY 2. 0 "Mc. Laren 650 Spider" by Steve Corey CC BY-NC-ND 2. 0

Quasi-Otherness 26 • "Technological otherness is a quasiotherness, stronger than mere objectness but weaker than the otherness found within the animal kingdom or the human one. " • Their quasi-animation can provide fascination, feelings of competition, quasilove and quasi-hate. • Examples: • • • Toys Clocks Automatons Video games Computer software "Video game station" by Niall Kennedy CC BY-NC 2. 0 "Spinning Top" by Jon Pinder CC BY-NC-ND 2. 0

Film and TV • Cinematic technologies "are transitional between hermeneutic and alterity phenomena" • They are "read" but life-like. • They can refer to the world beyond themselves but fall short of engagement with an other. 27 "Watching a blank screen" by Kenneth Lu CC BY 2. 0 "Grand Lake Theater Marquee 2019" by Ian Ransley CC BY 2. 0

Alterity's Counterpart to the Doubled Desire • The tendency to fantasize quasi-otherness into authentic otherness. • "Were the technofact to be genuinely an other, it would both be and not be a technology. " Photo by William Carroll "HAL" by Mekanoide CC BY 2. 0 28

Formalizations of Focal Relations • Embodiment—the technology becomes transparently part of the human (Human - Technology) World • Hermeneutic—the technology transparently represents the world Human (Technology - World) • Alterity—the technology is an Other, with its own potential relationship to the world Human Technology (- World) 29

Background Relations 30

Background Relations 31 • Technologies designed to function in the background without becoming transparent. • Require deistic intrusions (possibly repeated) to program or set up "Judson Studios" by waltarrrrr CC BY-NC-ND 2. 0 • "Becomes part of the experienced field of the inhabitant" • Create constant hum of white noise "All My Children (Microwaves)" by Rammikins! CC BY-SA 2. 0

Background Technologies to Insulate from Environment • Examples: clothing, shelter • Minimal to Maximal (Technological Cocoon) • "the background role is a field one, not usually occupying focal attention but nevertheless conditioning the context in which the inhabitant lives" • Most visible in breakdown "Cedar Mesa House on Fire" by Bob Wick (BLM) CC BY 2. 0 "House" by noona 11 CC BY-NC-ND 2. 0 32

Critical Responses 33

Critical Response: Technics and Praxis • “Ihde’s interpretation of technology, with its Heideggerian roots, presents an anti-Platonic theory with an emphasis upon the primacy of praxis. Furthermore, he argues for the ontological primacy and priority of technology over science, for science is really the tool of technology. The alternative…is fundamentally Platonic, assuming the primacy of theory over practice and mind over matter. … The book is very useful and one might wish that it would receive not only the attention of philosophers but find its way into the serious considerations of the technologists and masters of technology themselves. ” H. A. D. (1980). The Review of Metaphysics, 34(2), 380 -381. Retrieved April 5, 2020, from www. jstor. org/stable/20127511 34

Critical Response: Technology and the Life. World • “These three volumes from Indiana University Press launch a new series in the philosophy of technology under the general editorship of Don Ihde. …Here, Ihde offers a typology of technology-mediated experiences centered on (but not exhausted by) three types of relations: embodied, hermeneutical, and alterity. … The clarification of these relationships constitutes the first program Ihde attempts here, a phenomenology of technics aimed at grounding a nonsubjective, relativistic (but not relativist) account of human-world relations. ” Goldman, Steven L. Technology and Culture 32, no. 4 (1991): 1135 -137. Accessed April 5, 2020. doi: 10. 2307/3106183. 35

Critical Response: Technology and the Life. World • “Ihde’s primary aim in the first program (chapter 5) is to discover and exhibit through close phenomenological analysis of human-technology relations both their basic structural features and their essential ambiguity. His proposals in this regard represent the most persuasive and illuminating part of the book. … I will mention only one basic problem. Ihde insists throughout on a sort of “necessary relativism” of his navigational approach. …But the navigational point of view is surely not itself devoid of a generic manner of structing things which is assumed in taking it …[and thereby] introduces a nonrelativistic ingredient into the game willy-nilly. ” Browning, Douglas. The Review of Metaphysics 44, no. 3 (1991): 639 -41. Accessed April 5, 2020. www. jstor. org/stable/20129075. 36

Critical Response: Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde 37 • “Above all, Ihde will probably be remembered as one of the first U. S. philosophers to make technology itself the subject of philosophical reflection. ” (Selinger, 3) • “While these three relations exist on a continuum, and there is no decisive point at which one relation ends and another begins, specificity can be provided. ” (Selinger, 5) • “Don Ihde is the great mediator of contemporary philosophy. He has connected phenomenology with postmodernism, philosophy of technology with philosophy of science, Continental philosophy with analytic philosophy. … The important contribution Ihde makes is to show that this multiplicity of senses reflects an irreducible ontological multistability. ” (Borgmann, Albert, “Mediating Between Science and Technology”, pp. 247 and 262) Selinger, Evan. 2006. Postphenomenology A Critical Companion to Ihde. SUNY Series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press. http: //search. ebscohost. com. ezproxy. lib. vt. edu/login. aspx? direct=true&db=e 000 xna&AN=185011&scope=site.

Influences (An Imperfect Technic of Technics) Technology Medicine Phenomenology of Technics | Ihde Digital Communications Music 38