Wie technische Systeme aus uns schlau werden. Von maschineller Auslegung und Festlegung

ZusammenfassungDas Zusammenwirken von natürlicher und künstlicher Intelligenz kann aus philosophischer Perspektive als ein Fall von allgemeineren Mensch-Technik-Relationen gefasst werden. Dieser Beitrag nimmt einerseits eine solche allgemeinere Perspektive ein, betrachtet andererseits die Assistenzrelation zwischen lernenden Assistenzsystemen und Menschen als wiederum einen Fall solchen Zusammenwirkens.Dazu werden zunächst einige Begriffe abgeschritten, die die philosophische Perspektive etwa im Gegensatz zur informatischen oder psychologischen benötigt. Nach einigen handlungstheoretischen Grundlagen rückt die Perspektive auf aktuelle und im Entstehen befindliche Mensch-Technik-Relationen in den Mittelpunkt. Als ein Unterfall von Mensch-Technik-Welt-Verhältnissen hat Don Ihde die sogenannte hermeneutische Relation herausgestellt. Diese besagt: Menschen interpretieren die Welt vermittelt durch Technik. Kern des hier vorliegenden Beitrags ist die These von der Inversion dieser hermeneutischen Relation durch lernende Technik bzw. künstliche Intelligenz. Diese Inversion besagt: Technik ‚interpretiert‘ Menschen vermittelt durch Daten und arrangiert entsprechend die Welt. In beiden Relation geht es um deuten und gedeutet werden und damit immer auch um den Kampf um Deutungshoheiten.

The Muting of the Other: The Technological Reconfiguration of Our Auditory Experience of Others

Increasingly privatized auditory spaces resulting from the mutual engendering of auditory cultural practices and sound technologies that separated the sense of hearing and segmented acoustic spaces have had a muting effect on our experience of Others that has intensified since the advent of mobile listening devices. In Section 1 of the article, I outline features of the social realm of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries that made modern sound technologies possible and then features of the technological realm that have shaped today’s social realm – all with an eye toward our experience of other people. Then, in Section 2, I reach for a few phenomenological tools from the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, and Don Ihde to draw out the phenomenological vectors that have taken shape within the enmeshed sociotechnological context described in Section 1. Specifically, I show how technologically mediated auditory experience has been individualized and how the use of sound technologies on the go – whether wearing earphones or in a car – has had a muting effect on our experience of others.

A Preliminary Inventory of the Transformations of Scientific Imaging

Imaging technologies “transform” an object of study into something we can visually perceive in the form of an image. In science and medicine, imaging technologies enact a large variety of transformations, sometimes changing the spatiality of an object of study (e.g., making a small thing big enough to see, bringing close something far away, etc.), or changing its temporality (e.g., providing a picture of a single moment). I make use of the postphenomenological philosophical perspective, and in particular the work of its founder, Don Ihde, for guidance in exploring the different ways that imaging technologies transform our world in the process of rendering it available to visual perception. The main project of this paper is to develop a provisional categorization of a large variety of image transformations common to science and medicine.

Reception of Heidegger’s Notion of the Essence of Technology in the “Empirical Turn” Philosophy of Technology

In this article some important aspects of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is addressed. It is argued against Don Ihde’s observation that Heidegger’s philosophy of technology mostly concerns the large scale technological phenomena of industrial revolution – actually in Heidegger’s oeuvre we can find reflection on such micro-scale post-industrial technologies as cybernetics, biotechnologies etc. The critique of the essentialism of Heideggerian philosophy of technology by such authors as Andrew Feenberg, Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek is presented. It is suggested that earlier Heidegger’s concept of the essence of technology as “machination” (Machenschaft) is less susceptible to such criticism: whether technologies are exploitative and turning nature into “standing reserve”, or whether they are ecological and nature-friendly, whether they are understood as autonomous force, or democratically controlled process – it could be said that through contemporary technologies reality is increasingly turned into artifice and entities are revealed as makeable and producible.

Wildly Oscillating Molecules: Technological mediation of the atomic force microscope

The human sensory experience of submolecular phenomena is only possible through complex technological mediations that include not just magnifications, but also manipulations of time and translations from one sense to another. In my creative moving image project Wildly Oscillating Molecules, I develop strategies for using an atomic force microscope (AFM) as a cinematographic instrument, specifically using its tactile mechanisms to generate video. Using the AFM over four years to generate experimental moving image installations, I examine my physical and psychological experiences of this nanoscientific instrumentation. Although referred to by the philosopher of technology Don Ihde, the AFM's style of technological mediation has not been subjectively explored. Working to engage with an infinitesimal scale, the AFM has a unique style of spatial and temporal mediation that can be manipulated through the post-production and exhibition practices of the moving image. Wildly Oscillating Molecules provides insight into how the AFM influences human spatial and temporal perception of nanoscale phenomena and provides a new framework with which to analyse nanoscientific imaging practices. Understanding the nuances of technological mediation encourages science artists working with submolecular phenomena to adopt, evolve or transform properties of technological mediation when presenting their work to an audience.

La estrechez del mundo como fenómeno tecnológico contemporáneo

La finalidad de estas reflexiones es realizar un análisis del papel del cuerpo en nuestra época actual, bajo el supuesto de que el cuerpo se resignifica abordaremos el tema desde la perspectiva tecnológica, ¿qué implicaciones tiene la virtualización hacia la que tiende todo el aparataje tecnológico contemporáneo en la corporeidad? La relevancia de abordar el tema desde un enfoque tecnológico es que es este, precisamente, el aspecto que media entre el cuerpo (humano) y el mundo. Hoy en día a cobrado relevancia este tema porque intuitivamente podríamos pensar que la tecnología no solo conflictua con el cuerpo sino que lo anula, la finalidad de estas líneas es combatir esta noción de lo técnico como ajeno a lo humano. Para comprender a cabalidad estos planteamientos nos auxiliaremos de tres filósofos que problematizaron la técnica, a saber, Günther Anders, Paul Virilio y Don Ihde.

Instrumental Realisms and their Ontological Commitments

This paper shall concern itself with two variants of instrumental realism that have developed independently of each other and have made a mark on contemporary philosophies of science as well as of technology in their own respective ways. One is that of Don Ihde, the progenitor of the postphenomenological approach to technoscience, and the other that of Davis Baird, who emphasizes the epistemic centrality of instruments as bearers of knowledge in themselves. I shall juxtapose Ihde’s instrumental realism with the instrumental realism of Baird, both of whom emphasize the importance of experimentation and instrumentation to any comprehensive philosophy of science. Whereas Ihde wants to extend hermeneutics to science praxis, Baird wants to maintain an epistemological commitment to what he calls ‘thing knowledge.’ In comparing and contrasting these two variants of instrumental realism, I shall discern the implicit ontological and epistemological claims that underlie the two realisms in the background of scientific realism and critically evaluate their contributions to a more comprehensive understanding of science, technology, and the relation between the two.