scholarly journals Making Automation Explicable: A Challenge for Philosophy of Technology

2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (98) ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
Dominic Smith
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Economic Problem ◽  
General Context ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Epistemological Model ◽  
Epistemic Strategies ◽  
Empirical Turn ◽  
Reasoning By Analogy

This article argues for an expanded conception of automation's 'explicability'. When it comes to topics as topical and shot through with multifarious anxieties as automation, it is, I argue, insufficient to rely on a conception of explicability as 'explanation' or 'simplification'. Instead, automation is the kind of topic that is challenging us to develop a more dynamic conception of explicability as explication. By this, I mean that automation is challenging us to develop epistemic strategies that are better capable of implicating people and their anxieties about automation in the topic, and, counterintuitively, of complicating how the topic is interfaced with. The article comprises an introduction followed by four main parts. While the introduction provides general context, each of the four subsequent parts seeks to demonstrate how diverse epistemic strategies might have a role to play in developing the process just described. Together, the parts are intended to build a cumulative case. This does not mean that the strategies they discuss are intended to be definitive, however – other strategies for making automation explicable may be possible and more desirable. Part one historicises automation as a concept. It does this through a focus on a famous passage from Descartes' Second Meditation, where he asks the reader to imagine automata glimpsed through a window. The aim here is to rehearse the presuppositions of a familiar 'modernist' epistemological model, and to outline how a contemporary understanding of automation as a wicked socio-economic problem challenges it. Parts two and three are then framed through concepts emerging from recent psychology: 'automation bias' and 'automation complacency'. The aim here is to consider recent developments in philosophy of technology in terms of these concepts, and to dramatically explicate key presuppositions at stake in the form of reasoning by analogy implied. While part two explicates an analogy between automation bias in philosophical engagements with technologies that involve a 'transcendental' tendency to reify automation, part three explicates an analogy between automation complacency and an opposed 'empirical turn' tendency in philosophy of technology to privilege nuanced description of case studies. Part four then conclude by arguing that anxieties concerning automation might usefully be redirected towards a different sense of the scope and purpose of philosophy of technology today: not as a movement to be 'turned' in one direction at the expense of others ('empirical' vs 'transcendental', for instance) but as a multidimensional 'problem space' to be explicated in many different directions at once. Through reference to Kierkegaard and Simondon, I show how different approaches to exemplification, indirection and indeterminacy can be consistent with this, and with the approach to explicability recommended above.

scholarly journals The Use of Examples in Philosophy of Technology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mithun Bantwal Rao
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Study Research ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Empirical Turn ◽  
Empirical Case Studies

AbstractThis paper is a contribution to a discussion in philosophy of technology by focusing on the epistemological status of the example. Of the various developments in the emerging, inchoate field of philosophy of technology, the “empirical turn” stands out as having left the most enduring mark on the trajectory contemporary research takes. From a historical point of view, the empirical turn can best be understood as a corrective to the overly “transcendentalizing” tendencies of “classical” philosophers of technology, such as Heidegger. Empirically oriented philosophy of technology emphasizes actual technologies through case-study research into the formation of technical objects and systems (constructivist studies) and how they, for example, transform our perceptions and conceptions (the phenomenological tradition) or pass on and propagate relations of power (critical theory). This paper explores the point of convergence of classical and contemporary approaches by means of the notion of the “example” or “paradigm.” It starts with a discussion of the quintessential modern philosopher of technology, Martin Heidegger, and his thinking about technology in terms of the ontological difference. Heidegger’s framing of technology in terms of this difference places the weight of intelligibility entirely on the side of being, to such an extent that his examples become heuristic rather than constitutive. The second part of the paper discusses the methodological and epistemological import of the “example” and the form of intelligibility it affords. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein (standard metre), Foucault (panopticism), and Agamben (paradigm), we argue that the example offers an alternative way of understanding the study of technologies from that of empirical case studies.

scholarly journals THE PROBLEMS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER STABILITY IN THE EURO-ASIAN REGION

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
MARAT SALIKOV ◽  
SVETLANA KUZNETSOVA ◽  
ARTUR MOCHALOV
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Recent Developments

Introduction: Problems of stability of constitutional order have both theoretical and practical dimensions and touch all states. In the article, constitutional stability in the context of social changes is discussed. Methods: Doing the analysis, the authors use special methodology of legal research. In particular, a comparative-law is broadly applied as well as case studies. Analysis: In the first part of the article the authors discuss recent developments in the Russian constitutional legislation concerning electoral systems and informational technologies. In particular, the «Yarovaya Act» is criticized. In the authors’ opinion, legislation that does not meet social demands undermines constitutional stability. Frequent amendments of the Constitution and constitutional legislation (especially electoral one) do not contribute to constitutional stability as well. In the second part the authors analyze constitutional stability through the prism of inter-ethnic relations. They discuss some cases from Indian, Nigerian and Ethiopian experience. Results: The authors make a conclusion that stable constitutional order does not mean inflexible order. There should be a balance between social changes and maintenance of basic values and institutions. The constitutional order should be rigid enough for social changes not to be able to undermine the constitutional basis and trust of citizens to values, aims and principles proclaimed by the main law of the country.

scholarly journals Food and Nationalism: Gastronationalism Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsuko Ichijo
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Major Development ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Per Se ◽  
State Actors

AbstractThis article reviews recent developments in scholarship on gastronationalism, or more broadly, food and nationalism. It finds while the concept of gastronationalism per se has not been rigorously developed, scholarship of food and nationalism in general has been developing fast. A major development in the study of gastronationalism is the introduction of the everyday nationhood/banal nationalism perspective, which in turn diverts the focus away from the state’s intervention, a point emphasized by Michaela DeSoucey. The review of the field suggests that a renewed focus on the role of food in the interaction between state actors and international organizations would further refine the concept of gastronationalism. As for the study of food and nationalism, efforts to integrate findings from existing case studies to produce an overall understanding of society are needed.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Gledhill ◽  
Julia Knight
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Film History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Women's Film ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Parts

This book examines film history with the goal of reframing it to accommodate new approaches to women's filmmaking. It brings together a wide range of case studies investigating women's work in cinema across its histories as they play out in different parts of the world from the pioneering days of silent cinema through recent developments in HD transmissions of live opera. It also tackles a range of conceptual and methodological questions about how to research women's film history—how, for example, to reconceptualize film history in order to locate the impact of women in that history. Furthermore, the book looks at the debates over relations among gender, aesthetics, and feminism. In this introduction, a number of interrelated themes and issues that can be grouped into four broad problematics are discussed: evidence and interpretation; feminist expectations of both contemporary and past women's filmmaking; the impact of women's film history on existing historical narratives and theories; and factors that determine the visibility of women's films and build audiences for them.

Narratology and Imagology

Tekstualia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Miłosz Wojtyna
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Advertising Campaign ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Sort It ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Postclassical Narratology

Summarising recent developments in postclassical narratology and imagology, the article traces affinities between the two disciplines in order to observe the challenges that await the researchers of image and narrative in what Baudrillard called the simulation culture. Two case studies presented in the article (one devoted to Instagram visual narratives, the other – to a YouTube advertising campaign) illustrate challenges for the study of eventfulness, narrativity, and fictionality, and suggest - in line with the postulates of Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen – that a radical change of educational and communicative practices is needed in contemporary Western societies. A change of this sort, it is postulated, might be instigated by the collaboration of researchers in visual studies and narrative theory.

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