What is a deliberative system? A tale of two ontologies

Deliberative systems theorists have not explained what a deliberative system is. There are two problems here for deliberative systems theory: an empirical problem of boundaries (how to delineate the content of a deliberative system) and a normative problem of evaluation (how to evaluate the deliberation within a deliberative system). We argue that an adequate response to these problems requires a clear ontology. The existing literature suggests two coherent but mutually exclusive ontologies. A functionalist ontology postulates self-sustaining deliberative systems with their own functional goals and logics independent of human intentionality. In contrast, an interpretive ontology conceives of deliberative systems as the products of the beliefs and actions of the actors in the relevant practices—deliberative systems derive from human intentionality. We conclude by showing how these conflicting ontologies lead to different empirical and normative agendas.

Heidegger’s Struggle with History

In this paper I analyze early Heidegger’s concept of history. First, I argue that early Heidegger makes use of three distinct concepts or spheres of history, namely (1) history as intergenerational process, (2) history as personal or autobiographical development, and (3) history as the real center and origin of all intentional acts in the intentional self. Second, I argue that an essential motif in Heidegger’s discussion is the re-appropriation of what he considers the externalized and expropriated historical reality in all three spheres. I suggest that this constitutes an objective parallelism to similar moves in Marx and neo-Marxist thought, especially Lukács and the Frankfurt School. I show that Heidegger is on his way towards an ethics of time. First, in opposition to theoretical historicism and historical aestheti-cism or determinism of his time, early Heidegger advocates the active historical participation in history, the engagement in one’s historical situation or praxis. Second, in opposition to the publically regimented and reified time frames, calendars and interpretations, Heidegger argues for the self-reflexive, historical shaping of one’s very own and unique life-time. Third, because Heidegger finds the origin of all history in the historical enactments of intentions in the intentional self, he ultimately argues for the self-reflexive acknowledgment of this ultimate historicity at the very heart of human intentionality, calling for the always renewed accentuation of this inevitable and ultimate historicity as a necessary condition for authentic temporality.En este artículo analizo el concepto de historia de Heidegger. Primero, argumento que el Heidegger temprano hace uso de tres conceptos distintos, o esferas, de historia, a saber, (1) la historia como proceso de interrogación, (2) la historia como desarrollo personal o autobiográfico y (3) la historia como el centro real y origen de todos los actos intencionales en el yo intencional. Segundo, argumento que un motivo esencial en la discusión de Heidegger es la re-apropiación de lo que considera la externalización y expropiación de la realidad histórica en las tres esferas. Sugiero que esto constituye un objetivo paralelo al de movimientos similares en Marx y el pensamiento neo-Marxista, especialmente Lukács y la Escuela de Frankfurt. Muestro que Heidegger está en este mismo camino hacia una ética del tiempo. Primero, en oposición al historicismo teórico y al esteticismo histórico o determinismo de su tiempo, el Heidegger temprano defiende la participación activa en la historia, el compromiso con la propia situación histórica o praxis. Segundo, en oposición a los marcos temporales, calendarios e interpretaciones regimentados y reificados, Heidegger defiende la auto-reflexión y la formación histórica del tiempo vital de uno mismo. Tercero, porque Heidegger encuentra el origen de toda historia en las realizaciones históricas de las intenciones del yo intencional, defiende en última instancia el reconocimiento auto-reflexivo de la historicidad en el núcleo íntimo de la intencionalidad humana, llamando a una siempre renovada acentuación de esta inevitable y última historicidad como una condición necesaria de la temporalidad auténtica.

Distributed Cognition and the Phenomenology of Modernist Painting and Poetry (Rilke and Cézanne)

Contemporary views of consciousness, long anticipated by phenomenology, suggest that cognition includes a distribution across motoric and perceptual experience and is in important ways interwoven with the surrounding environment. This paper takes up implications for aesthetics, demonstrating how such an understanding of consciousness is expressed in analogous ways in modern poetry and painting, particularly in works that have been the object of phenomenological study. An aesthetics of embodied cognition can illuminate the common resources of vital human intentionality in artworks across different media, including Cézanne’s painting and Rilke’s poetry and poetics, and both can be conceived not only as aesthetic but as cognitive artefacts. Merleau-Ponty’s claim that philosophy, visual art, and poetry share a common aim and the poetic inspiration Rilke took from Cézanne and other visual artists can be better understood by considering art and literature from a cognitive standpoint.

The intentionality of questions – a critique of Searle’s analysis of speech acts

Searle’s analysis and classification of speech acts entails that one of the two components of a speech act is a proposition. The first part of the article demonstrates that the analysis and classification is misleading when applied to three authentic examples of questions embedded in an everyday activity. Considerations concerning the situations that give rise to the questions suggest that the discrepancy is due to assumptions about intentionality and perception implied by the proposition-based analysis and classification of speech acts. In the second part of the article, Searle’s theory of intentionality and perception is compared with cognitive ethnographic observations of the situations that give rise to the three questions. The comparison shows that Searle’s theory of intentionality and perception is insufficiently informative and partly misleading as regards human intentionality and perception in the performance of an everyday activity. The claim is that the assumptions about intentionality and perception that form the basis of the proposition-based analysis and classification of speech acts are insufficient as a basis for a general theory of speech acts.

Network Communication: Algorithmic and Risky Connection

The article presents methods of reasoning about the modern algorithmic culture defined by the communicative modes of networks. It is emphasized that, regardless of the biases and accentuations of theoretical thought regarding the information environment and digital communications, the transformation of operator statuses and the mechanics of exchanges, the conceptual space is increasingly leaning towards variations in modeling the interaction of human and non-human agents, in parity or enhancing the privileges of everyone. In support of this, cases of mutual observability of complex algorithms of status online platforms and financial markets, that increases their micro-temporal predictability; the use of botnets of infected computers without the consent of their users in an attack on targeted websites, demonstrating the capabilities of internal machine logic; broadcasting “fake news” in informative practices inspired by human intentionality and adjusted by network generativity are considered. In attempts to discuss socio-technical media reality, discourses of power systems, hierarchical structures and civil society are combined with an understanding of the processes of “social submission” and “machine enslavement”(Deleuze, Guattari), the “technical mentality” (Simondon), as the ontogenetic ability of complex machines to autonomous and self-referential development, that should not be ignored or exaggerated. The search for “non-technical” semantics for describing the media state, updating an acceptable language for sociology, without losing the patterns and facts of media reality, providing a speedy universal connection, producing new solidarity and disunity, changing meanings, but also exuding virulence, remains urgently needed.

Building Moral Brains

Technology is evolving at a rate faster than human evolution, especially human moral evolution. There are those who claim that we must morally bioenhance the human due to existential threats (such as climate change and the looming possibility of cognitive enhancement) and due to the fact that the human animal has a weak moral will. To address these existential threats, we must design human morality into human beings technologically. By moral bioenhancement, these authors mean that we must intervene technologically in the biology of the human animal in order to get it to behave morally to address these existential threats. I will bring the idea of moral bioenhancement into conversation with two philosophers of technology. Bernard Stiegler has argued that technology and culture, and thus technology and human beings, have always evolved hand in hand. Peter-Paul Verbeek notes that we have always designed morality into technology, and thus he sees technology as mediating human morality. When we offload human intentionality onto technology, Verbeek argues, technological objects and systems participate in shaping the moral subjectivity of the human actor. I will show that modern technological bioenhancement obliterates human being. Whereas in the past, human culture was handed from generation to generation through the mediation of technology, in the modern era, the human becomes the raw material upon which a technological will (imperative) rides.

Anarchistic action. Social organization and dynamics in southern Scandinavia from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages

A general interest in centralized institutions, state formation and prestige objects has dominated research on social organization and dynamics in Scandinavia from the Late Iron Age to the Middle Ages. Accordingly, a focus on kingly power, aristocratic influence, hierarchies and warrior might has dominated archaeological research designs for the last forty years. Subsequently, other perspectives have been evaded and their significance has been diminished. In this article, I use anarchistic principles as an analytic perspective and present examples of anarchistic actions – network organization, justified leaders and decentralization – drawing on well-known but ambiguous phenomena such as thing sites, the southern Danish defence system Danevirke, and migration and mobility. I suggest a perspective that recognizes resistance, authority and decentralization as well as centralization and institutionalization, allowing a broad spectrum of social engagement and interrelations to influence social organization. I will argue that human intentionality has been overlooked in favour of structures and institutions, and that the power of network organization and decentralization is influential in shaping social organization and dynamics.

Song of the Ovsîanka: Enhanced Nature of the Urban Canary in Imperial St. Petersburg (1880-1900)

This article explores a stylized version of “natural” birdsong as an element of the soundscape of a historical city, late-nineteenth-century St. Petersburg. From 1880 to 1900, canaries were brought to the city in great numbers from hatcheries located in the Russian countryside. Their song was the ovsîanka, a mix of melodies acquired from wild Russian birds. This song reflects “enhanced nature,” linking human intentionality to the agency of a nonhuman animal, the canary, and both to the city. Breeders, merchants, keepers, and birds formed a super-urban assemblage spanning the city and the countryside. Canaries, like human migrants flooding to the city during this time, retained their strong village roots, and their urban role depended on them. In this super-urban assemblage, the canaries’ urban performance was an expression of their modified and contextual agency, though their agency was assembled and authorized by human-nonhuman networks engendered by the city.

The Life-World of Persons with Autism

This chapter describes some characteristics of the world of autistic people. Although these conditions are difficult to classify because of how diverse they are, this chapter reveals that there are some essential common traits. These common elements concern fundamental aspects of human intentionality, such as the preconditions of social relatedness. The chapter identifies these traits primarily through the studies conducted by Leo Kanner, who had worked contemporaneously but independently of Hans Asperger during the 1940s. Kanner identified some key features that reappeared, in different ways, in categorial definitions of autism: isolation, need for repetition, and the so-called “islets of ability.” Here, the different “autisms” are forms of existence that, for various biological reasons, develop from a fragile natural self-evidence of the inter-human world, from an original intercorporeal and interpersonal weakness. These reveal that sensory-perceptual worlds of some kind do emerge in autistic people, albeit each with its own particular features: autism, therefore, is not an “empty fortress” but rather a “full weakness.” These existential worlds involve an original difficulty in harmonizing with others, and are often difficult to grasp or imagine for those who live outside of them.