Technology and the Evolution of the Human

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Scott Ruse ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Cultural Transfer ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
Important Field ◽  
Further Development

Philosophy of technology is gaining recognition as an important field of philosophical scrutiny. This essay addresses the import of philosophy of technology in two ways. First, it seeks elucidate the place of technology within ontology, epistemology, and social/political philosophy. I argue technology inhabits an essential place in these fields. The philosophy of Henri Bergson plays a central role in this section. Second, I discuss how modern technology, its further development, and its inter-cultural transfer constitute a drive toward a global “hegemony of technology”. The crux of the argument is that the technological impulse within humanity insinuates itself into nearly every aspect of human existence. The structures of the state, the economy, and culture, are each framed by this impulse. In the final analysis, it is argued that only a thorough examination of the intimate connection between humanity and technology can lay the foundation for a comprehensive philosophy of human existence.

The concept of the frame in philosophical terms – the role of time and memory in human existence

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 193-201
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Olewińska
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
William Faulkner ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Sound And The Fury ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Time Frames

In The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner writes: “Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops, does time come to life.” The following words relate to the role of memory frames in human life. They also begin the analysis of the ideas of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur and David Farrell Krell. Even though there is a strict reference to the Modernist thinkers, the author goes slightly deeper, reminding earlier concepts of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Protagoras. The second part of the article has been devoted to the notions connected with time frames and memory such as experiencing of the passage of time, reminding, forgetting, forgiving as well as postmemory.

What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classic European Philosophy of Technology?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Mitcham
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Alan Turing ◽  
The World ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Jacques Ellul ◽  
Philosophical Project

Classic European philosophy of technology is the original effort to think critically rather than promotionally about the historically unique mutation that is anchored in the Industrial Revolution and has since progressively transformed the world and itself. Three representative contributions to this pivotal philosophical project can be found in texts by Alan Turing, Jacques Ellul, and Martin Heidegger. Despite having initiated analytic, sociological, and phenomenological approaches to philosophy of technology, respectively, all three are often treated today in a somewhat patronizing manner. The present chapter seeks to revisit and reconsider their contributions, arguing that, especially in the case of Ellul and Heidegger, what is commonly dismissed as their overgeneralizations about modern technology as a whole might reasonably be of continuing relevance to contemporary students in the philosophy of technology.

scholarly journals Martin Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism: Philosophy of Technology and the Media in the Light of the "Black Notebooks". Implications for the Reception of Heidegger in Media and Communication Studies

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Black Forest ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Moment

“Heidegger is the petty bourgeois of German philosophy, the man who has placed on German philosophy his kitschy night-cap […] When I see that even super-intelligent people have been taken in by Heidegger, […] I feel sickened to this day. […] Heidegger used to hold court at Todtnauberg and at all times would allow himself to be admired on his philosophical Black Forest plinth like a sacred cow. […] They made their pilgramages, as it were, into the philosophical Black Forest, to the sacred Martin Heidegger and knelt down before their idol”--- Thomas BernhardAbstract:In spring 2014, three volumes of the Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks), Heidegger’s philosophical notebooks, were published in the German edition of his collected works. They contain notes taken in the years 1931-1941 and have resulted in public debates about the role of anti-Semitism in Heidegger’s thought.This article asks: What are and should be the implications of the publication of the Black Notebooks for the reception of Heidegger in the study, theory, and philosophy of media, communication, and technology? It discusses Theodor W. Adorno’s and Moishe Postone’s contributions to the critical theory of anti-Semitism and applies these approaches for an analysis of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks.The analysis shows that the logic of modern technology plays an important role in the Black Notebooks. The paper therefore also re-visits some of Heidegger’s writings on technology in light of the Black Notebooks. There is a logical link between the Black Notebooks' anti-Semitism and the analysis of technology in Being and Time and The Question Concerning Technology. The first publication provides the missing link and grounding for the second and the third.Heidegger’s works have had significant influence on studies of the media, communication, and the Internet. Given the anti-Semitism in the Black Notebooks, it is time that Heideggerians abandon Heidegger, and instead focus on  alternative traditions of thought. It is now also the moment where scholars should consider stopping to eulogise and reference Heidegger when theorising and analysing the media, communication, culture, technology, digital media, and the Internet.Image source: By Willy Pragher (Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Resistance Is Futile

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter-Paul Verbeek ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Marxist Tradition

Andrew Feenberg’s political philosophy of technology uniquely connects the neo-Marxist tradition with phenomenological approaches to technology. This paper investigates how this connection shapes Feenberg’s analysis of power. Influenced by De Certeau and by classical positions in philosophy of technology, Feenberg focuses on a dialectical model of oppression versus liberation. A hermeneutic reading of power, though, inspired by the late Foucault, does not conceptualize power relations as external threats, but rather as the networks of relations in which subjects are constituted. Such a hermeneutic approach replaces De Certeau’s tactics of resistance with a critical and creative accompaniment of technological developments.

Hitler the Anti-Nihilist? Statehood, Leadership, and Political Space in Heidegger’s Seminar of 1933-34

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-243
Author(s):  
Richard Polt
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Human Finitude

This essay considers Heidegger’s 1933–34 seminar ‘On the Essence and Concept of Nature, History, and State’ as an attempt to develop an anti-nihilist political philosophy based on human finitude and qualitative difference. I examine Heidegger’s views on the relation between people and state, the role of a leader, and the nature of political space. Heidegger distinguishes human existence from the natural world and argues that a people can attain its full, distinctively human Being only through its state, which is to be ruled absolutely by the soaring will of a born leader. He also offers an account of political space that distinguishes between the local homeland and the ‘interaction’ that connects it to a broader territory. I relate these ideas to some other texts by Heidegger and sketch an Arendtian critique of them.

Technology, philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kroes
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Coherent Field ◽  
Primary Meaning ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Economic

The philosophy of technology deals with the nature of technology and its effects on human life and society. The increasing influence of modern technology on human existence has triggered a growing interest in a philosophical analysis of technology. Nevertheless, the philosophy of technology as a coherent field of research does not yet exist. The subject covers studies from almost every branch of thinking in philosophy and deals with a great variety of topics because of a lack of consensus about the primary meaning of the term ‘technology’, which may, among others, refer to a collection of artifacts, a form of human action, a form of knowledge or a social process. Among the most fundamental issues are two demarcation problems directly related to the definition of technology. The first concerns the distinction between technological (artificial) and natural objects. It involves the relation between man, nature and culture. The second pertains to the distinction between science and technology as types of knowledge. The science–technology relationship has become of central importance because of the widespread assumption that the distinguishing feature of modern technology, as compared to traditional forms of technology, is that it is science-based. Another much discussed issue is the autonomy of technology. It deals with the question of whether technology follows its own inevitable course of development, irrespective of its social, political, economic and cultural context.

Information, Communication and Art

2019 ◽  
Vol 2018 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-249
Author(s):  
You Xilin
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
The Media

AbstractFrom Karl Marx to Martin Heidegger, the dialectical relationship between technology and art has become an ontological question of social reality. Marshall McLuhan’s theory of cool-hot media provides an analytical framework for the information age. “Cool-hot media” is McLuhan’s truly original concept. However, while McLuhan determined electronic media to embrace printing media which was regarded as a typical representative of hot media, he could not foresee that electronic media is properly speaking the latest representative of the split type of hot media. Through Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems which underlies formalization and Embodied Cognition Theory, this article argues that there exists an ontological difference between computers and human existence and explores the position of art from the contemporary cool media perspective. This contribution is not only intended to be a philosophical critique of the philosophy of technology of the media age, but also a repositioning of contemporary art and its function from the media perspective. The technological division and abstraction represented in hot media becomes the basic premise for a holistic approach to computer science and artificial intelligence. Their rich information context leads to multiple interpretations of meaning instead of a one-dimensional definition; the everyday actions of cold media have become a type of life art in a broad sense, and manifest their social function as an art of the information age, i.e. to balance the cognitive narrative of hot media and to ensure that its communication does not suppress the audience’s individual creativity, so that they can maintain their subjectivity by tracing the source of information. Art facilitates active audience participation and so allows participants to overcome a one dimensional way of thinking and promotes imagination and creativity in liberal arts education. Following the rules of art, cold media obtains its greatest significance as the guardian of the free subjectivity of all humans, which is alien to modern technology. Cold media and hot media balance each other to create a new way of producing and living that not only discovers but also safeguards the world.

scholarly journals The Struggle for Technology: Towards a Realistic Political Theory of Technology

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter-Paul Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Social Awareness ◽  
The Political ◽  
Level Of Abstraction ◽  
Marxist Approach ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
High Level

Abstract Pieter Lemmens’ neo-Marxist approach to technology urges us to rethink how to do political philosophy of technology. First, Lemmens’ high level of abstraction raises the question of how empirically informed a political theory of technology needs to be. Second, his dialectical focus on a “struggle” between humans and technologies reveals the limits of neo-Marxism. Political philosophy of technology needs to return “to the things themselves”. The political significance of technologies cannot be reduced to its origins in systems of production or social organization, but requires study at the micro-level, where technologies help to shape engagement, interaction, power, and social awareness.

scholarly journals 3rd ICTs and Society Meeting; Paper Session - Theorizing the Internet; Paper 5: Shaping the third mode of human existence on the Internet

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-135
Author(s):  
László Ropolyi
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Paper Session ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Society Meeting ◽  
The Third ◽  
Communication Culture ◽  
Late Modern

We propose to build up a philosophy of the Internet instead of building up its scientific theory. Our philosophy of the Internet includes several components of the philosophy of technology, information, communication, culture and organization because we use four different coexisting contexts for the better understanding of the nature of the Internet: the technological, the communication, the cultural and the organism ones. This philosophy of the Internet shows that the Internet is the sphere of a new mode of human existence, basically independent from, but built on and coexisting with the former (natural and societal) spheres of existence, and created by the late-modern humans.

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