Search

I would like to introduce the notion of machine hermeneutics in this paper. The notion refers to hermeneutical activity performed by machines. Machines are now capable of making the very interpretive tasks, using artificial intelligence algorithms based on the technology of machine learning that used to be the exclusive domain of human beings. In making this claim, I am not talking about possible conscious machines of the future, but those existing here and now. With facial recognition algorithms, for example, machines are now performing routinely what must be regarded as hermeneutical analyses with astounding accuracy and power. Thus, machine hermeneutics supplements Don Ihde's notion of material hermeneutics. In the latter, it is still human beings who do the interpretation, through the lenses provided the natural sciences; in this case, the natural sciences, or the technology afforded by the sciences, intervene between the human being and the world. In machine hermeneutics, on the contrary, the intervening comes in two layers. On the one hand, there is the usual intervention that Ihde talks about, but on the other, the artificial intelligence algorithm performs its own kind of intervention and interpretation, presenting an already interpreted result to the human beings, who then perceive it through the aid of the usual intervention such as the normal eyeglasses. Then the paper discusses the problem of how to justify the kind of perception that undergoes this process. In what sense can it be said that the algorithm is performing the right action, i.e., one such that the process comes up with a right picture of the world? I contend that this does not merely consist of technical excellence for the technology involved, but also ethical excellence. The two cannot be considered one apart from the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a version of the hermeneutic philosophy of science. Special focus is placed on the ways of reading theoretical objects in scientific inquiry. In implementing readable technologies, this reading succeeds in contextually visualizing the theoretical objects by means of various sorts of signs. A configuration of readable technology accomplishes a further step. The configuration textualizes the contextually produced signs. Textualizing the reading of theoretical objects interlaces the meaningful articulation and objectification of scientific domains. The horizon of possibilities for textualizing is constantly shifting in the process of normal-scientific inquiry, and the shifting horizon plays the role of a hermeneutic fore-structuring of the outcomes of textualizing. The paper explores the importance of "material hermeneutics" for the contextual reading of theoretical objects. The conclusion is drawn that the hermeneutic study of the entanglement of technological artifacts with the outcomes from reading-as-textualizing requires the introduction of ontic-ontological difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central thesis of this paper is that human unconscious processes influence the behavior and design of artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis is discussed through the case study of a chatbot called Replika, which intends to provide psychological assistance and friendship but has been accused of inciting murder and suicide. Replika originated from a trauma and a work of mourning lived by its creator. The traces of these unconscious dynamics can be detected in the design of the app and the narratives about it. Therefore, a process of de-psychologization and de-humanization of the unconscious takes place through AI. This psychosocial approach helps criticize and overcome the so-called "standard model of intelligence" shared by most AI researchers. It facilitates a new interpretation of some classic problems in AI, such as control and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides an overview of hermeneutics in relation to technology and culture. It highlights the importance of clear language when discussing the cultural and political aspects of technology. The document explores the work of philosophers Don Ihde, Patrick Heelan, Rudolf Makkreel, and Martin Heidegger, who have applied hermeneutics to various fields such as the natural sciences and multiculturalism. It also discusses the concept of material hermeneutics, which involves the interpretation of technology and its impact on perception. The document includes contributions from multiple authors that delve into the application of hermeneutics in different contexts, such as smart medical technologies and digital technologies. These essays offer valuable insights into the complex relationship between humans and technology, exploring topics such as the interpretation of data, the ethical dimensions of technology, and the cultural implications of scientific knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

Currently, we find ourselves in a paradigm in which we believe that accepting climate change data will lead to a kind of automatic action toward the preservation of our environment. I have argued elsewhere (Fried 2020) that this lack of civic action on climate data is significant when placed in the historical, military context of the technologies that collect this data––Earth remote sensing technologies. However, I have not yet discussed the phenomenological or moral implications of this context, which are deeply interconnected. In this paper, I assert that Earth remote sensing technologies can, if we are not careful, lead us to a kind of environmental deskilling. This assertion comes in four parts. First, the military context of Earth remote sensing technologies––which collect important data on climate change––acts as a kind of stability, as defined by Don Ihde and others. Second, I invoke Sir Patrick Heelan to argue that the theoretical underpinnings of Earth systems science do not translate from military to environmental praxes as we imagine they do. Third, Hannah Arendt makes the case that a state's trust in simplifying narratives like that of climate data, meant to create "islands" of certainty in an uncertain world, can be self-defeating. That is to say, they can silence public action. I extend these arguments through Vallor's analysis of moral deskilling, in which she points out that an overemphasis on autonomous data collection––and trust in a kind of automated decision-making on that data––can deskill us from important questions relevant to our collective flourishing. In all of these examples, the lines between environmental and military research are blurry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I first analyze the extension of hermeneutical interpretation in the Heideggerian sense to products of contemporary technology which are components of our "lifeworld". Products of technology, such as airplanes, laptops, cellular phones, washing machines, or vacuum cleaners might be compared with what Heidegger calls the "Ready-to-hand" (das Zuhandene) with regard to utilitarian objects such as a hammer, planer, needle and door handle in Being and Time. Our life with our equipment, which represents the "Ready-to-hand" in Heidegger's sense of the word, is determined by temporalization (Zeitigung) which cannot be separated and isolated from the wholeness of things in the world. In the second part of my paper, I explore the positive achievement of material hermeneutics (Don Ihde) with regard to its extension to technoscience and the discussion of how such hermeneutics can contribute to the preservation of our threatened lifeworld, but also to explore the possibilities of how technical inventions, medical innovations could improve our way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, there is an emerging interest for the potential role of hermeneutics in reflecting on the practices related to digital technologies and their consequences. Nonetheless, such an interest has neither given rise to a unitary approach nor to a shared debate. The primary goal of this paper is to map and synthetize the different existing perspectives to pave the way for an open discussion on the topic. The article is developed in two steps. In the first section, the authors analyze digital hermeneutics "in theory" by confronting and systematizing the existing literature. In particular, they stress three main distinctions among the approaches: (1) between "methodological" and "ontological" digital hermeneutics; (2) between data- and text-oriented digital hermeneutics; and (3) between "quantitative" and "qualitative" credos in digital hermeneutics. In the second section, they consider digital hermeneutics "in action", by critically analyzing the uses of digital data (notably tweets) for studying a classical object such as the political opinion. In the conclusion, we will pave the way to an ontological turn in digital hermeneutics. Most of this article is devoted to the methodological issue of interpreting with digital machines. The main task of an ontological digital hermeneutics would consist instead in wondering if it is legitimate, and eventually to which extent, to speak of digital technologies, or at least of some of them, as interpretational machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a qualitative review of a series of classical myths which are or could be used as interpretative metaphors or similes for people, settings, and situations relating to the Computer World. It will look at basic, widely accepted terms like Trojan or Trojan horse, cyberphobia, or Project Athena. It will also infer others through an exercise in hermeneutical mythopoeia. Examples include Tantalus, representing the controlled obsolescence of technological resources, turning the user into a revived Sisyphus, or Theseus as a powerful anti-virus. Not forgetting the clumsy navigator, Odysseus or Ulysses, representing disperse, inefficient Internet users, and especially the great myth of the teacher Mentor, representing the power of information available on the Internet and searchable via Google. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we make sense of the idea of 'personal' or 'social' relations with robots? Starting from a social and phenomenological approach to human-robot relations, this paper explores how we can better understand and evaluate these relations by attending to the ways our conscious experience of the robot and the human-robot relation is mediated by language. It is argued that our talk about and to robots is not a mere representation of an objective robotic or social-interactive reality, but rather interprets and co-shapes our relation to these artificial quasi-others. Our use of language also changes as a result of our experiences and practices. This happens when people start talking to robots. In addition, this paper responds to the ethical objection that talking to and with robots is both unreal and deceptive. It is concluded that in order to give meaning to human-robot relations, to arrive at a more balanced ethical judgment, and to reflect on our current form of life, we should complement existing objective-scientific methodologies of social robotics and interaction studies with interpretations of the words, conversations, and stories in and about human-robot relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to give an outline of digital hermeneutics understood as the encounter between hermeneutics and digital technology, particularly the Internet. In the first part, I want to raise the attention of IT researchers and hermeneuticists to the theoretic and practical relevance of the encounter of their areas of research that are sometimes considered as incompatible to each other. There is still a lot of translation work to be done in order to get these two cultures come closer to and profit from each other. The second part of the paper deals with the foundation of digital hermeneutics on what I call— following Heidegger's and Vattimo's paths—digital ontology as opposed to digital metaphysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will argue that medical specialists interpret and diagnose through technological mediations like X-ray and fMRI images, and by actualizing embodied skills tacitly they are determining the identity of objects in the perceptual field. The initial phase of human interpretation of visual objects takes place during the moments of visual perception before we are consciously aware of the perceived. What facilitate this innate ability to interpret are experiences, learning and training that become humanly embodied skills. These embodied skills are actualized during the moments of visual perception. My argument is that biology, society and instruments constitute unique individual ontologies influencing specialist readings of the technological output, in other words, putting limits on the 'truth-to-nature' relation, which is so much sought for in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It can sometimes be difficult to think about 'everyday' objects, those things we are so familiar with that they become taken-for-granted aspects of the backdrop of our world. But what if those objects, despite their everydayness, are politically fraught and call for closer examination? I suggest that insights from two contemporary perspectives, postphenomenology and actor-network theory, are useful for drawing out the experiential, social, and political dynamics of everyday things. In this paper, I review and resituate several key concepts from these two theoretical frameworks and outline a method for using them together for the evaluation of technology. As a guiding example, I explore a paradigmatic everyday device: fire hydrants. Despite their everyday character, hydrants fulfill multiple social roles, some of them loaded with difficult and important political implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the connection between hermeneutics, quantum mechanics, and the philosophy of science. It focuses on the research of Patrick Heelan and Don Ihde, who have explored how interpretation and technology play a role in scientific discoveries. The article also introduces the concept of "pluriculture" coined by Ihde, which refers to a global form of multiculturalism influenced by technological artifacts. The main point of the article is to emphasize the significance of hermeneutics in comprehending and interpreting the world through the lens of science and technology. [Extracted from the article]

Postphenomenology is not a critique of phenomenology, but a practical interpretive epistemology where technological artifacts and practices are studied. These new researchers can be called 'R&D postphenomenologists'. Over the past 25 years, the expanding hermeneutics of postphenomenology has been undertaken by classical phenomenologists, cultural anthropologists, media/communications writers and performance artists. But these face Scharff's challenge of 'insufficient critical consideration' and an entire world of artifice experienced through embodied mobile devices. In response there is a 'weaving metaphor' and performance art with the intentional use of artifice/illusion to allow for multistability and 'implicit idealism' in a complex and unpredictable sensory world of ontological experiments and case studies. Allowing for multistable interpretations, variational theory, and the study of illusions, technoscience researchers and users of emerging technologies can develop heuristics for interpreting the world through devices, if programmers of these technologies make the hermeneutics accessible and visually interpretable. Both groups must expand the purview of the 'readable technologies' of Patrick Heelan, allowing for an expanding material hermeneutics of postphenomenology that is poised to become a praxis of perception for users of ubiquitous digital technologies and devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most accounts of responsibility focus on one type of responsibility, moral responsibility, or address one particular aspect of moral responsibility such as agency. This article outlines a broader framework to think about responsibility that includes causal responsibility, relational responsibility, and what I call "narrative responsibility" as a form of "hermeneutic responsibility", connects these notions of responsibility with different kinds of knowledge, disciplines, and perspectives on human being, and shows how this framework is helpful for mapping and analysing how artificial intelligence (AI) challenges human responsibility and sense-making in various ways. Mobilizing recent hermeneutic approaches to technology, the article argues that next to, and interwoven with, other types of responsibility such as moral responsibility, we also have narrative and hermeneutic responsibility—in general and for technology. For example, it is our task as humans to make sense of, with and, if necessary, against AI. While from a posthumanist point of view, technologies also contribute to sense-making, humans are the experiencers and bearers of responsibility and always remain in charge when it comes to this hermeneutic responsibility. Facing and working with a world of data, correlations, and probabilities, we are nevertheless condemned to make sense. Moreover, this also has a normative, sometimes even political aspect: acknowledging and embracing our hermeneutic responsibility is important if we want to avoid that our stories are written elsewhere—through technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screen time has become a hot button issue in psychology with researchers fiercely debating its mental effects. If we want to understand the psychological dynamics of technology use, however, a numerical conceptualization of screen time will lead us to gloss over crucial distinctions. To make this point, the present article takes a hermeneutic approach to a negative form of screen time known as 'phubbing', which is the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one's phone. Using interview data, it is demonstrated that whether or not phone use amounts to phubbing, that is, whether or not it tips over and becomes harmful, depends on a host of contextual factors such as relation (who), content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), and communication (how). These findings demonstrate that not all screen time is created equal: what is harmful and inappropriate in one context is benign in another, and vice versa. Simply put, screen time is not a numerical entity whose causal effects we can measure and explain, but a meaningful activity that we must try to understand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but also the parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan's closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed, and issues concerning Heelan's treatment of the social context of science are raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers of science and technology who see themselves as coming "after" Husserl also claim that their phenomenology is hermeneutical. Yet they neither practice the same sort of phenomenology, nor do they all have the same understanding of hermeneutics. Moreover, their differences often seem to be more a function of different pre-selected substantive commitments—say, to take a "material" turn or to be resolutely "empirical"—than the product of any serious effort to clarify what it is be hermeneutical. In this essay, after some discussion of Dilthey's reception among post-Husserlians (especially Patrick Heelan and Don Ihde), I consider how aspiring hermeneuts might make their own pre-possession of substantive and methodological commitments a hermeneutical topic. This is, of course, is not just a scholarly question of how post-Husserlian phenomenologists might make themselves more phenomenological. Without thoughtful self-awareness of these commitments, one's assumptions about the use of technology, design, the place of science in the larger culture and in relation to conceptions of human flourishing—all of these assumptions are likely to pass through into technoscientific practice with insufficient critical consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Don Ihde and Lambros Malafouris (Philosophy and Technology 32:195–214, 2019) have argued that "we are homo faber not just because we make things but also because we are made by them." The emphasis falls on the idea that the things that we create, use, rely on—that is, those things with which we engage—have a recursive effect on human existence. We make things, but we also make arrangements, many of which are long-standing, material, social, normative, economic, institutional, and/or political, and many of which are supported by various technologies, including AI, more and more. Critical theorists, such as Habermas, have argued that we need a "depth" or critical hermeneutics (one that combines hermeneutical understanding with scientific explanation) to provide a full account of this kind of recursivity. For Habermas, the explanatory aspect of critical hermeneutics has been modeled on neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian theories. We propose a new critical hermeneutical approach that uses the tools of embodied cognitive science, affordance theory, material engagement theory, and the concept of the socially extended mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay raises the question of material hermeneutics in Heelan's philosophy of techno-science. For Heelan, a continental philosophy of technoscience, referring to Husserl and Heidegger and especially to Merleau-Ponty, features hermeneutic contexts of mathematics and measurement as well as laboratory observation, including what the later Heelan spoke of as "portable laboratories," for the sake of objectivity and "meaning making." For Paul Feyerabend, this material practice corresponded to the use of both techniques of observation and instrumentation, and not less "propaganda" in the case of Galileo which practice for Heelan included the ontological status of measures and numbers as well as apprenticeship in what Heelan called "contingent local practical cultural milieus." The essay includes a discussion of Heidegger on mathematics and Bruno Latour on pasteurization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embodied cognition is an interpretative—or hermeneutical—cognition inherent in motor-sensory perception intrinsically informed by biological and sociocultural memory, a cognition embedded in the organism as well as the socio-cultural environment interacting with it (Ward et al. TOPOI 36:365–375, 2017), of which technologies are a part. Yet, smart machines are advancing on human abilities to perceive and interpret concerning the accuracy, quantity, and quality of the data processed. Machines process and categorize images, perform classification tasks, they calculate and perform pattern analysis, all machine learning processes are task-specific. Machine learning processes resemble human interpretative processes; however, these are two very different ways of "dealing with something," although both can be said to be hermeneutical, one enactive, the other material; the first is a meaning-generating interpretative process, the second a statistics-based information output. The information extracted from all the data fed into the computer is the end-product of machine learning, whereas human interpretative enactments are continuous and necessary for any application of the information output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a framework for analysing how digital software and models become mediums for creative imagination in architectural design. To understand the hermeneutics of these relationships, we develop key concepts from Material Engagement Theory (MET) and Postphenomenology (PP). To push these frameworks into the realm of digital design, we develop the concept of Digital Materiality. Digital Materiality describes the way successive layers of mathematics, code, and software come to mediate enactive perception, and the possibilities of creative material engagement actualised in work with software. Just as molecular materials come to transform action with material objects, so digital materiality comes to enable and transform creative practices with computers. Digital architectural design form a new space for ongoing enactive discovery and creativity through manipulation of digital models and their underlying software environments. By shifting relationships within their digital models, architects can direct their attention, intention, and imagination towards widely different aspects of the model. Here, creative imagination becomes a fundamentally situated activity where mind emerges through dynamic interaction between a variety of embodied, material, and cultural domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Alberto Romele's book, "Digital Hermeneutics," which explores the understanding and implications of digital technologies in our lives. Romele argues that as technologies become more integrated and autonomous, the need for interpretation and hermeneutics re-emerges. The book is divided into two parts, with the first part focusing on the relationship between reality and digital representations, and the second part delving into the ontological question of whether digital machines have interpretational capacities. The article concludes by discussing the political and social implications of digital hermeneutics, particularly in relation to ethics and the loss of individual agency. Romele's book is a significant contribution to the field of philosophy and ethics of technology, offering a new perspective on the impacts of technology for practitioners in various fields. While the book is valuable, the author offers some critiques regarding certain digressions, lack of context in examples, and the need for further unpacking of arguments. Despite these critiques, the book is an impressive resource for understanding the hermeneutic aspects of digital technologies and will be valuable for students and researchers in related fields. Future research can explore the sociological aspects of digital hermeneutics, develop a method for investigating hermeneutical aspects of digital technologies, and explore the contribution of digital hermeneutics to ethics of technology and responsible innovation. [Extracted from the article]

What is the relation between material hermeneutics, bodies, perception and materials? In this article, I shall argue cultural learning processes tie them together. Three aspects of learning can be identified in cultural learning processes. First, all learning is tied to cultural practices. Second, all learning in cultural practice entangle humans' ability to recognize a material world conceptually, and finally the boundaries of objects, the object we perceive, are set by shifting material-conceptual entanglements. All these aspects are important for material hermeneutics in a technoculture. Postphenomenology has expanded the connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology by focusing on studies of how perception, bodies, materials, the sensual realm and hermeneutics are entwined when we perceive the world through technologies. Following Don Ihde, hermeneutics expands beyond interpretation of texts in the humanities. We can interpret materials as for instance animal bones to make new sense of the Bible. New technologies have expanded material hermeneutics, when we can 'look' into bodies and 'perceive' below surfaces. Interpretation via such tools in a technoculture, both limit and extend our hermeneutic horizons in the humanities as well as in the natural sciences. Furthermore, from the perspective of cultural learning processes, material hermeneutics in the human and natural sciences depend on more than mediating instruments. Material hermeneutics also involve the material cultural environments of scientific apparatuses and the scientists' processes of learning in cultural practice. This changes the focus from relations in postphenomenology to processes of relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the study by Don Ihde about the hermeneutic perspective of technological culture. The author cites the arguments of Don Ihde about technology as an essential expression of socio-historically situated human nature and his stand about the importance of phenomenology in the postmodern era. The author also explores the cultural visions of technology and the philosophy of technological culture.

Currently, our official rationality is still of a Cartesian kind; we are still embedded in a mechanistic order that takes it that separate, countable entities (spatial forms), related logically to each other, are the only 'things' that matter to us—an order clearly suited to advances in robotics. Unfortunately, it is an order that renders invisible 'relational things', non-objective things that exist in time, in the transitions from one state of affairs to another, things that 'point' toward possibilities in the future, which mean something to us. I have called such things, hermeneutical-dialogical 'things' as they gradually emerge in our back-and-forth, step-by-step relations to the others and otherneses in our surroundings; they consist in the 'promissory' things sustaining our trust in each other and in our authorities, in our social organizations and social institutions, and in our culture. Clearly, we need to understand better, not only what robots can, and cannot do, but also the long-term ethical and political implications of inserting robotic activities into our everyday ways of relating ourselves to our surroundings if we are to avoid the dystopian futures envisaged by some. Descartes' aim of "making ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature," forgets our larger task of our making ourselves into human beings—of doing together in dialog what we cannot do apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses importance of performance for exploring the nature of interface between the physical, cultural, and experiential world. Topics include use of communication technologies for affecting collective behavior and hermeneutic of identity shift; working with physical and large data sets for identifying identify shared rhythms; and conference at Cambridge University related to same.

Contemporary philosophy of technology after the empirical turn has surprisingly little to say on the relation between language and technology. This essay describes this gap, offers a preliminary discussion of how language and technology may be related to show that there is a rich conceptual space to be gained, and begins to explore some ways in which the gap could be bridged by starting from within specific philosophical subfields and traditions. One route starts from philosophy of language (both 'analytic' and 'continental': Searle and Heidegger) and discusses some potential implications for thinking about technology; another starts from artefact-oriented approaches in philosophy of technology and STS and shows that these approaches might helpfully be extended by theorizing relationships between language and technological artefacts. The essay concludes by suggesting a research agenda, which invites more work on the relation between language and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is inextricably woven into the social and cultural fabric of different cultures. Tool use technologies, created and used by our pre-sapiens relatives, preceded us by more than a million years. There are no human cultures that are pre-technological. All humans have a material culture with complexly patterned praxes involving artifacts; we have only recently begun to appreciate the completely of even what may be called technologically mediated cultures. Technologies either magnify or amplify human experiences and can change the ways we live. This non-neutral, transformative power of humans enhanced by technologies is essential feature of the human-technology relations. Technologies are the extension of our bodies. The technological form of life is part and parcel of culture, just as culture in the human sense inevitably implies technologies. Every technology, as a word, has a signifier and a meaning. The signifier can be seen as the hardware of the technology, while the meaning can be conceived of as the uses and the functions that the technology performs. However, a technology, like many words, tends to be ambiguous, that is its meaning is mutable. As a consequence, in order to make sense, a technology calls for a cultural context where to be embedded. In this essay, I will demonstrate how this relationship can be articulated and their main theoretical implications for the study of new technologies give rise to ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]