This paper examines the central place of the list and the associated concept of an identifier within the scaffolding of contemporary institutional order. These terms are deliberately chosen to make strange and help unpack the constitutive capacity of information systems and information technology within and between contemporary organisations. We draw upon the substantial body of work by John Searle to help understand the place of lists in the constitution of order. To enable us to ground our discussion of the potentiality (...) and problematic associated with lists we describe a significant and modern instance of list-making, situated around the issue of digital identity management. The theoretical framework discussed allows us to better explain breakdowns in the institutional order characteristic of this domain. (shrink)

In his book, History as a Science and the System of the Sciences, Thomas Seebohm articulates the view that history can serve to mediate between the sciences of explanation and the sciences of interpretation, that is, between the natural sciences and the human sciences. Among other things, Seebohm analyzes history from a phenomenological perspective to reveal the material foundations of the historical human sciences in the lifeworld. As a preliminary to his analyses, Seebohm examines the formal and material presuppositions of (...) phenomenological epistemology, as well as the emergence of the human sciences and the traditional distinctions and divisions that are made between the natural and the human sciences. -/- As part of this examination, Seebohm devotes a section to discussing Husserl’s formal mereology because he understands that a reflective analysis of the foundations of the historical sciences requires a reflective analysis of the objects of the historical sciences, that is, of concrete organic wholes (i.e., social groups) and of their parts. Seebohm concludes that Husserl’s mereological ontology needs to be altered with regard to the historical sciences because the relations between organic wholes and their parts are not summative relations. Seebohm’s conclusion is relevant for the issue of the reducibility of organic wholes such as social groups to their parts and for the issue of the reducibility of the historical sciences to the lower-order sciences, that is, to the sciences concerned with lower-order ontologies. -/- In this paper, I propose to extend Seebohm’s conclusion to the ontology of chemical wholes as object of quantum chemistry and to argue that Husserl’s formal mereology is descriptively inadequate for this regional ontology as well. This may seem surprising at first, since the objects studied by quantum chemists are not organic wholes. However, my discussion of atoms and molecules as they are understood in quantum chemistry will show that Husserl’s classical summative and extensional mereology does not accurately capture the relations between chemical wholes and their parts. This conclusion is relevant for the question of the reducibility of chemical wholes to their parts and of the reducibility of chemistry to physics, issues that have been of central importance within the philosophy of chemistry for the past several decades. (shrink)

In addition to the reflection on biopolitics in a neoliberal condition, this article aims to pro- pose some considerations on the concept of institution, which, in the way here examined, can be seen as the very background of every anthropopoietic process.

It has long been argued that robotic systems decrease the error margin of civilian casualties that are often the consequence of human error. The focus on algorithmic decision-making and the gradual reduction of human control unveils moral and juristic issues that lead to the crucial question: can we take algorithms to court?

Population ageing and increased digitalization each constitute an ongoing and profound transformation within contemporary modes of living, as growing advances in technological development mix and intermingle with the lived realities of older people as the final recipients. It is against the backdrop of this interplay that user involvement has enjoyed ever-rising advocacy to an almost normative degree. Beyond articulating methodological principles, however, the literature has remained surprisingly vague as to the practical implementation of the approach. Less appears to be known, (...) both empirically and conceptually, about how design and user involvement are done in practice and how they would matter to bring about intentional or unintentional effects. To engage with these developments, this thesis aims at taking the practices of user involvement and design to the centre of its inquiry by adopting a perspective from Science and Technology Studies. Specifically, the thesis seeks to both build on and contribute to the established body of STS on the connection between technology design and older users and ask: What is there to learn about user involvement as a method, if we focus on the practices of doing user involvement? To answer this question, the thesis studies four different aspects of the practices of user involvement and design. In particular, the thesis reviews the literature on how user involvement mattered in previous empirical projects that include older people, it examines how different configurations of participation matter in design workshops, it scrutinizes the achievement of user involvement in corporate practices and it traces the circumstantial performances of such practices. The largest empirical piece comes from a two-year ethnographic study of a small- to medium-sized enterprise, the material from which informed Paper III and Paper IV. The findings highlight how user involvement in practice is both contingent and transformative, as it selectively enrols different participants and performs multiple realities. In practice, user involvement appears to be dependent on a set of underlying premises and socio-material conditions and thus is always a dynamic and momentary achievement. Furthermore, the thesis shows how the practices of user involvement themselves may bring into existence different realities, articulating and materializing particular versions of objects and images of ageing. Accordingly, the thesis contributes theoretically by illuminating the underlying socio-material facets of user involvement, and by emphasizing ageing as a particular object/image of design. Specifically, the appended papers encompass a conceptual framework, as well as three new concepts: design multiple, shifting interstices and viscous image landscape, in order to theorize the underlying conditions for user involvement, its relationship with design and its entanglement with ageing. Practically, the thesis enunciates three main implications regarding questions of goodness, politics and ethics. (shrink)

Reading science fiction in China as a science project, this paper articulates a philosophical reflection on the ontology and ethics of truth that stems from the world of China. Through the reading of various texts of and about science fiction in China, from the Republican to the contemporary period, this article analyzes the situation of science fiction in China. Since science fiction was originally conceived as a science novel—a literary form that meant to convey scientific truth in order to create (...) a self-determining Chinese public—the history of science fiction in China is punctuated with the political question of what scientific truth is and what it does. Reading though such a milieu and Liu Cixin’s short novel, Hearing Dao in the Morning, this article will demonstrate that science fiction in China offers science a different modality of truth, that evokes an ethic of truth based on the curiosity towards the “unknown unknown.” The “unknown unknown” truth is significant because it re-structures the relationship between science fiction, truth, self-determination and the public. (shrink)

Context: This essay contends that radical constructivism makes a mistake in focusing on cognition at the expense of where cognitive phenomena surface: in the interactive use of language. Goal: It grounds radically social constructivism by exploring the conversational nature of being human. It also urges abandoning the celebration of observation, inherited from the enlightenment 's preoccupation with description, in favor of participation, the recognition that speaking and writing are acts of continuously reconstructing reality, which is only partly conceivable yet is (...) interacted with. Method: It distinguishes between conversation as observed and conversation as articulated by its participants. It postulates accountability as a chief conversational move through which conversations can regain their natural flow when disturbed and construct inherently ethical realities for their participants. Unwillingness to repair problematic conversations amounts to acquiescence to constraints that are typical of discourses and the construction of institutional realities. Implications: It suggests that the ultimate institutionalization consists of replacing institutional artifacts with computational ones, which was the aim of early cybernetics. Computational artifacts have no agency and cannot be held accountable for what they do. This essay proposes a continuum of possible discourses between authentic conversation and computation. It concludes by calling for the drawing of finer distinctions within that continuum and expresses the hope for not closing off the possibility of returning to authentic conversation where humans realize their being human -- rather than institutional actors or machines. (shrink)

In this panel, we explore the future of value sensitive design (VSD). The stakes are high. Many in public and private sectors and in civil society are gradually realizing that taking our values seriously implies that we have to ensure that values effectively inform the design of technology which, in turn, shapes people’s lives. Value sensitive design offers a highly developed set of theory, tools, and methods to systematically do so.

There is an ongoing and robust tradition of science and technology studies scholars conducting ethnographic laboratory studies. These laboratory studies—like all ethnographies—are each conducted at a particular time, are situated in a particular place, and are about a particular culture. Presumably, this contextual specificity means that such ethnographies have limited applicability beyond the narrow slice of time, place, and culture that they each subject to examination. But we do not always or even often treat them that way. It is beyond (...) common for us to speak about what one or another laboratory study reveals about the laboratory, or “science” much more broadly. Given the contextual specificity of our ethnographic laboratory studies, what justifies this presumed generalizability? Initially, this manuscript surveys typical responses to this question, but then it pursues an unusual one: the potential replicability of ethnographic results. This potential is hereby explored, via an ethnographic replication attempt—one designed and conducted in order to test the generalizability of a particular laboratory study, that of Latour and Woolgar’s classic Laboratory Life. The results of the ethnographic replication attempt are reported, and a remarkable degree of replicability is established. (shrink)

The main goal of the paper is to show that Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms may be viewed as a culmination of efforts of those thinkers who at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th century were a part of the so called anti-positivist movement. The paper focuses fore and foremost on those philosophers who in their attempts of grounding and defining Geisteswissenschaften were following the initial idea of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Cassirer’s symbolical monism is presented as (...) an attempt of identifying that “original need of human mind”, an attempt which ultimately paved way for determining and establishing a distinctively different type of reflection than the one found in natural sciences, despite all the multifariousness of seemingly unreconcilable results arrived at by different thinkers. The author argues that Cassirer’s conception – unlike those found in the works of Droysen, Dilthey, Rickert or Windelband – strives to ground Geisteswissenschaften’s conditions of possibility not on the Kantian concept of determining judgment, but on a concept of reflective judgment, i.e., not on the Kantian concept of the scheme, but on concept of symbol which in turn makes it possible to establish a methodological and symbolic-cultural unity of both natural sciences and humanities. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will consider the relationships between values, beliefs and Environmental Citizenship. The role of personal values, value orientations and environmental beliefs in explaining pro-environmental actions and behaviour is widely explored. It is already acknowledged that self-enhancement values are less predictive of pro-environmental actions than self-transcendence values. Additionally, beliefs are considered to be at the core of human behaviour in cognitive theories explaining pro-environmental behaviour and are an important part of many theories used to predict pro-environmental actions. We (...) regard Environmental Citizenship as a combination of certain pro-environmental actions and civic engagement, both public and private, that lead to the mitigation of environmental problems. It is important to answer the question of whether general values and beliefs can potentially be relevant antecedents of Environmental Citizenship. Understanding how values and beliefs relate to Environmental Citizenship would allow for evidence-based ways of promoting Environmental Citizenship in schools and communities and would empower educators to make effective decisions in promoting Environmental Citizenship. (shrink)

Debates about terrorism and technology often focus on the potential uses of technology by non-state terrorist actors and by states as forms of counterterrorism. Yet, little has been written about how technology shapes how we think about terrorism. In this chapter I argue that technology, and the language we use to talk about technology, constrains and shapes our understanding of the nature, scope, and impact of terrorism, particularly in relation to state terrorism. After exploring the ways in which technology shapes (...) moral thinking, I use two case studies to demonstrate how technology simultaneously hides and enables terroristic forms of state violence: police control technologies and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones. In both these cases, I argue that features of these technologies, combined with a narrative of precision and efficiency, serves to mask the terroristic nature of the violence that these practices inflict and reinforces the moral exclusion of those against whom these technologies are deployed. In conclusion, I propose that identifying acts of terrorism requires a focus on the impact of technologies of violence (whether they are “high tech” or not) on those most affected, regardless of whether users of these technologies conceive of their actions as terroristic. (shrink)

What is data? That question is the fundamental investigation of this dissertation. I have developed a methodology from social-scientific processes to explore how different people understand the concept of data, rather than to rely on my own philosophical intuitions or thought experiments about the “nature” of data. The evidence I have gathered as to different individuals' constructions of data can be used to inform further inquiry of data and the design of information systems. My research demonstrates that people have different (...) constructions of data. The methodology of the SDFN, created for this dissertation, has proven able to probe those understandings. The SDFN, loosely based on a DFD and combined with ideas from SNA, provides a way of discovering practical definitions of hard-to-operationalize terms like data. The process of repeatedly categorizing various items as data allows the methodology to explore how participants actually use the term, rather than relying on theoretical dictionary-based definitions. Analysis of the interviews found three different constructions of data: data as communications, a container for meaning; data as subjective observations, sense-impressions filtered by knowledge; and data as objective facts, measurements revealing the relationships of reality. (shrink)

Who is Pulcinella? What does his laughter have to say about the "end of time" and the end of life of Giandomenico Tiepolo? How can the end of a life make anyone laugh like Carnival’s popular mask does? This article tries to answer such questions. By unfolding the tools that come from the realm of Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy – notably the notion of "recapitulation of time" in its relation to comedy – we will trace a path which links Michail Bachtin’s (...) theories on the carnivalesque culture together with a recognition in the aesthetics of "character". In this encounter, the consistency of Pulcinella-King Carnival’s form of life will appear in the light of an “escape route”: it winks at a kind of general and anonymous beatitude, which pairs with the experience of the destitution of time. (shrink)

Skinner claimed when outlining his behaviorist philosophy, that concepts exist in the world before anyone identifies them, yet that they are inherently linked to social and cultural descriptions and predictions. The perspective has been dismissed by many researchers in the learning sciences as an important but obsolete relic in origin narratives introducing perspectives. In such a narrative, behaviorism is portrayed as incompatible with complex domains related to agency, emotion and engagement. However, researchers have started to consider its benefits when taking (...) the necessary and required steps to provide a clear analysis of sequential learning tasks on a materialistic level. Following the recent trend of defending behaviorism, the presented paper creatively explores the valuable and useful functions of behaviorist philosophy that are integral to research associated with design, teacher professional development, and digital ubiquitous technology. The paper aims to provide a philosophical foundation for further discussion of a scientific methodology by relating basic conceptual underpinnings of behaviorism to different domains and levels of analysis integral to the networked sociocultural perspective. (shrink)

Using the 2010 film Into Eternity as a springboard for thought, this article considers how archaeologies of the future might help us make sense of how to seek commonality and take care across vast temporal scales. The film, about a nuclear waste repository in Finland, addresses the impossibility of communicating across millennia. In thinking with this film, we engage with recent responses to the post-human call, arguing that they are inadequate in dealing with the new questions that are asked by (...) post-human thought. Instead, we attempt to engage the work of Spinoza and Sloterdijk in rethinking the human as a strategic position or point of purchase amongst the shared materiality of present and future worlds. We offer the concepts of the materially affective and atmosphere in order to identify points of connection, drawing on moments in Into Eternity to work through these arguments in a tentative repositioning of the human as a site of concern. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the ontological status of actants. Actants are argued as being the basic constituting entities of networks in the framework of Actor Network Theory (Latour, 2007). I introduce two problems concerning actants that have been pointed out by Collin (2010). The first problem concerns the explanatory role of actants. According to Collin, actants cannot play the role of explanans of networks and products of the same newtork at the same time, at pain of circularity. The second (...) problem is that if actants are, as suggested by Latour, fundamentally propertyless, then it is unclear how they combine into networks. This makes the nature of actants inexplicable. -/- I suggest that both problems rest on the assumption of a form of object ontology, i.e. the assumption that the ontological basis of reality consists in discrete individual entities that have intrinsic properties. I argue that the solution to this problem consists in the assumption of an ontology of relations, as suggested within the framework of Ontic Structural Realism (Ladyman & Ross, 2007). Ontic Structural Realism is a theory concerning the ontology of science that claims that scientific theories represent a reality consisting on only relation, and no individual entities. -/- Furthermore I argue that the employment of OSR can, at the price of little modification for both theories, solve both of the two problems identified by Collin concerning ANT. -/- Throughout the text I seek support for my claims by referring to examples of application of ANT to the context of networked learning. As I argue, the complexity of the phenomenon of networked learning gives us a convenient vantage point from which we can clearly understand many important aspects of both ANT and OSR. -/- While my proposal can be considered as an attempt to solve Collin's problems, it is also an experiment of reconciliation between analytic and constructivist philosophy of science. -/- In fact I point out that on the one hand Actor Network Theory and Ontic Structural Realism show an interesting number of points of agreement, such as the naturalistic character and the focus on relationality. On the other hand, I argue that all the intuitive discrepancies that originates from the Science and Technology Studies’ criticism against analytic philosophy of science are at a closer look only apparent. (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

This thesis is about the crisis in representation that accompanies the attempt to account for lived experience, with particular reference to bodily pain in social science. The diagnosis of this problem of experience identifies epistemology as an inappropriate means of knowing that initiates a translational paradox unable to satisfy the simultaneous demands of making lived experience familiar in representational form yet retaining the foreignness of the original experience at the same time. This problem of simultaneity is not a problem, however, (...) if it is built into a way of knowing, something that escapes epistemological conditions of possibility with its either/or of singularities. To know in such ‘double vision’, or fractionally, characterises post-epistemological thinking. This thesis draws on a relatively underdeveloped method for practicing a fractional means of knowing from post- actor-network theory, that of the pinboard, and explores how it might be usefully applied to the problem of experience. The thesis constitutes an experiment in producing a social science account of the lived experience of chronic pain using this method as an alternative to conventional epistemological techniques that initiate the problem of experience. Through initial theoretical discussion, followed by reflection on its practical application involving the construction of fractional accounts of lived experience for five participants experiencing chronic pain, the pinboard is developed as a technique that seeks to maintain ‘double vision’ whilst inherently resisting attempts to resolve the juxtaposition it makes visible, enacting and engaging in an ontological politics with conventional methods of social analysis. This includes discussion of how the method might be transported from methodological knowledge spaces to effectively intervene on such conventional methods. (shrink)

This paper begins with an appreciation and critique of the remarkable work of Peter Sloterdijk which makes it possible to open up a number of issues concerning philosophy and its relation to the social sciences and humanities, most particularly concerning the role of evidence and the pervasiveness of Eurocentrism. In particular, the paper argues that it is possible to think of different ways of raising the spectre of space which are as plausible as the account provided by Sloterdijk’s spatial philosophy/philosophy (...) of space. Navigating by the compass of classical Chinese civilisation, I proceed to sketch out a different diagnosis from that of Sloterdijk of how space is being materialised in contemporary Euro-American cultures. Drawing on logographic traditions of writing the world, I argue that, rather than describing what is now being produced by capitalism and other actors as a warehoused world full of lost souls, it is possible to think of different means of describing how the future is being scripted. (shrink)

Este artículo consiste de una referencia razonada a un conjunto definido de conceptos desarrollados en el seno de lo que ha llegado a conocerse como estudios de la gubernamentalidad. Comienza narrando sucintamente las vicisitudes conceptuales de un grupo de estudiosos anglosajones cuya apuesta intelectual, inspirada en gran medida por la analítica foucaultiana del poder, fue pensar la política sin reducirse—ni privilegiar—al Estado en tanto principio explicativo. A continuación, tras poner el foco sobre la noción de “procesos de subjetificación”, demuestra en (...) qué sentido la conformación de subjetividades adquiere un lugar central en el marco del análisis del poder político moderno. La relevancia complementaria que para dicho enfoque presentan las “racionalidades” y las “tecnologías”, el pensamiento y las prácticas, es ilustrada a partir de la consideración del papel desempeñado por las disciplinas “psi” en la constitución de sujetos gobernables en el contexto de las democracias liberales. Finalmente, el artículo concluye aludiendo al interés creciente del que son objeto las biotecnologías en los últimos estudios de N. Rose. (shrink)

Este estudio revisa el desarrollo del análisis propuesto por Michel Foucault sobre el poder político en términos de gubernamentalidad, y esboza sus características principales. Se examina el despliegue de esta perspectiva, centrándose particularmente en cómo este enfoque genealógico del análisis de la conducta de todos y cada uno ha sido acogido y desarrollado en el mundo angloparlante. Se evalúan algunas de las críticas fundamentales que han sido planteadas a la analítica de la gubernamentalidad, y se arguye en favor de la (...) productividad continua y la creatividad de estas maneras de analizar la emergencia, naturaleza y consecuencias de las artes de gobierno. (shrink)

When we talk about things like the 'lost art of letter-writing' or the 'digital communications revolution,' what do we mean? What do we lose and what do we gain as we move towards digital ways of being in the world? Critically engaging with many of the canonical writers in the philosophy of technology , and following what has been termed the 'empirical turn' in that discipline, this thesis answers such questions by means of a philosophical, comparative study of epistolary technics (...) and praxis in the early nineteenth and 21st centuries, making use of Romantic era archival letters and related materials to compare and contrast our own, Internet-enabled experience of communicating over distance. In so doing, it seeks to contribute towards our understanding of the ways in which information and communication technologies influence humanity by taking a long-view of many of the more radical claims for the ways in which the Internet effects change in culture, society and self. The thesis is structured thematically, with chapters examining the experience of distance and presence in these two periods, the potential for meaningful engagements by way of communicative media, the technological reconfiguration of social networks, and shifts in the public/private distinction. In its conclusions it is broadly sympathetic to the somewhat pessimistic positions of Heidegger and Borgmann, finding evidence and supplying argument to support the notion that the Internet does in some circumstances serve to diminish our meaningful involvements with the world and each other. It is, however, critical of many of the more extreme arguments for the substantive impact of the Internet, which very often lean too heavily towards naive technological determinism, neglect the social shaping of technology, overemphasise the radical novelty of the Internet, or simply deny or downplay many of its undoubted benefits. (shrink)

This research investigates the intersubjective aspects of communication design practice through a focus on the other, and the roles that the other takes in practice. It does so in order to better understand the practice of communication design as practiced on a day-to-day basis. Communication design, as a practice, and a field, extends out of graphic design. This extension is due to a change in priorities; from privileging the graphic and artefactual aspects of practice, to prioritising the consideration of the (...) broader agency of design within a specific context. This research has been accomplished through a practice-led methodology. Communication design projects form the methods of, and the foundation for, the investigation. Seven individual research projects have been designed and carried out. These projects have each incorporated members of the different participants of communication design practice; new and existing clients, student designers and established practicing designers. This has allowed the research to investigate its concerns from a range of roles and viewpoints, incorporating different perspectives into its observations and understandings. This research extends the work of Donald Schön and his investigation into The Reflective Practitioner. It achieves this through a consideration for the roles of the other in professional practice. In order to articulate this move extensive reference is made to the thinking of the twentieth century philosophers Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. This research has found that the other plays critical roles in the practice of communication design. These roles are ones of providing provocative disjunction. Provocative disjunction, as understood by this research, contributes directly to the generative action communication design offers artefacts, clients and designers. The observations and understandings of this practice-led research have enabled extensive insights into the practice of communication design. These insights contribute significantly to the broader communication design discourse in professional practice, education and research. (shrink)

This chapter considers the topological ordering of urban space enabled by mobile computing devices, using London as a field site and example. Building on theory developed by Scott Lash, Rob Shields and others, I first distinguish between virtual and topological figurations of the city. I then consider the various implications of topological spatiality for urban politics, before moving on to an attempt to empirically develop a typology of mobile applications centred on London, each offering different opportunities for urban encounter and (...) representation. The central argument advanced in this chapter is that mobile-enabled topologies are important and increasingly routine social imaginaries with the potential to radically disrupt other kinds of socio-spatial order. (shrink)

What people are realistically able to do and be in their lives, their capabilities, are of central moral importance according to the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Examples are the capabilities to be healthy or to be part of a community. The CA has become an influential normative framework for reflecting on justice, equality, well-being and development. In the past decades it has been successfully applied to areas such as education and health care. Only quite recently have (...) scholars started to use the CA to reflect on technology, for example on the contribution of ICT to development in the Global South. Much of this work is empirical. This dissertation contributes to the theoretical foundations for future empirical and ethical work by providing a philosophical exploration of how the CA can be brought to bear on technology. It discusses the applicability and added value of the CA for the design of technical artifacts, for the evaluation of technological development projects, and for the assessment of technology from the perspective of the good life. One main question addressed in this dissertation is which technology theories and design approaches could fruitfully supplement the CA, in order to ‘operationalize’ it in this new area. For this purpose participatory design, value sensitive design, the use plan account of technical artifacts, inclusive/universal design, actor-network theory, appropriate technology, pluralist theories of technology and the system/network view of technology are discussed. Another guiding question is what the exact nature is of human capabilities as discussed in the CA, and technology in the sense of technical artifacts, and how we can then conceptualize the relation between them. It is argued that we need to regularly move back and forth between ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’. The former allows us to see the details of design of technical artifacts, the latter how exactly technical artifacts are embedded in broader socio-technical networks. Both, it is claimed, are crucial for the expansion of human capabilities. (shrink)

While geoengineering may counteract negative effects of anthropogenic climate change, it is clear that most geoengineering options could also have some harmful effects. Moreover, it is predicted that the benefits and harms of geoengineering will be distributed unevenly in different parts of the world and to future generations, which raises serious questions of justice. It has been suggested that a compensation scheme to redress geoengineering harms is needed for geoengineering to be ethically and politically acceptable. Discussions of compensation for geoengineering (...) harms, however, sometimes presume geoengineering has presented new and unique challenges to compensation that cannot be readily accommodated by existing compensation practices. The most explicit formulation of this view was recently presented by Toby Svoboda and Peter J. Irvine, who argued that two forms of uncertainty in geoengineering — namely, ethical uncertainty and scientific uncertainty — make it immensely difficult to devise an ethically and politically satisfactory compensation scheme for geoengineering harms. -/- In this paper, we argue against the view that geoengineering presents new and unique challenges relating to compensation. More specifically, we show that placing these challenges within the broader context of anthropogenic climate change reveals them to be less serious and less specific to geoengineering than some appear to believe. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and design is most usually thought of in terms of applied ethics. There are, however, difficulties with this: for instance, conventional ethical stances such as deontology or consequentialism depend on procedures that are inapplicable in the sorts of complex situations which designers commonly face. In any case, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can act as an authority with which to guide practice. Depending on which theories we refer to, (...) we receive different, and often directly conflicting, guidance. Paralleling the idea that design has its own epistemological foundations, rather than needing to import ideas from science, I propose an alternative way to think of the relation between design and ethics, looking to the ethical questioning implicit in what designers do, and the similarities between those situations which they encounter as a matter of course and those questions with which normative ethics is both most concerned and confused. I suggest that we might reason about ethical questions in design in design’s own terms and, also, that rather than apply ethical theory to design we explore what design can contribute to ethics, inverting the more usual hierarchy. (shrink)

0 false 21 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false Las identidades transgénero plantean importantes desafíos a la perspectiva psicosocial dominante con que se aborda el género y con que se concibe al ser humano. En este artículo propongo un conjunto de reflexiones que buscan contribuir a reconfigurar la manera en que las perspectivas psicosociales se aproximan a la concepción de lo humano a través de problematizar la mirada convencional sobre las identidades de género. Estas reflexiones emergen en (...) el marco de un proyecto de investigación-acción participante con colectivos trans de la ciudad de Barcelona. La discusión se centra en tres dicotomías: el binomio hombre-mujer, la distinción entre sexo y género, y las fronteras entre humano y no-humano. Concluyo esbozando algunas posibles implicaciones de esta reformulación para el estudio psicosocial de las identidades trans y, más generalmente, para la propia disciplina de la psicología. (shrink)

The question of how the university can relate to the world is centuries old. The poles of the debate can be characterized by the plea for an increasing instrumentalization of the university as a producer and provider of useful knowledge on the one hand (cf. the knowledge factory), and the defense of the university as an autonomous space for free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake on the other hand (cf. the ivory tower). Our current global predicament, (...) however, forces us to rethink the relation between university and world. Indeed, an easy nstrumentalization of the university for the purposes of society is no longer possible in troubled times when the future of society itself seems to be at stake. Nevertheless, urgent societal concerns do need to be addressed by the university. Hence, the disinterested position seems a highly irresponsible option. The aim of this dissertation is to reconsider the relation between the university and the world from an educational perspective by addressing the question “How to situate study in the relation between university and society?” The dissertation consists of three parts. In Part One, the existing literature on the relation between university and society will be discussed. The first chapter discerns two main approaches to this issue, namely the transcendental-philosophical approach (cf. the idea of the university) and the critical-sociological approach (cf. academic capitalism) that conceive of the university, respectively, as an idea and as an organization. By means of an excursus on the emergence of the university in the Middle Ages, the case is made for an ecological approach to the university. In the second chapter, the work of two authors who have recently adopted such an ecological approach is briefly presented. Whereas Ronald Barnett’s theory of the ecological university is situated more in the transcendental-philosophical tradition, Susan Wright’s investigations of the university in the knowledge ecology can be placed in the critical-sociological tradition. Both conceptions, however, are hinged on an institutional understanding of the university. In line with recent developments in social theory, namely the focus on practices, it is proposed to work towards an ecology of study practices. Part Two presents Isabelle Stengers’ idea of the ecology of practices. The third chapter elucidates Stengers’ work on scientific practices by first situating it within the so-called Science Wars, which provided the impetus to elaborate a theoretical framework for a civilized dialogue between scientists and the broader public. The basic tenets and concepts of her approach, such as the understanding of practice as a set of requirements and obligations, are presented, explained, and discussed. In the fourth chapter, the focus shifts from scientific practices to study practices. Assisted by Stengers’ writings on Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, this chapter aims to flesh out Whitehead’s description of the university as a ‘home of adventures’ in order to come to an educational understanding of the study practices of the university. A conceptual inquiry into how study practices activate certain worldly problems and turn them into matters of study is presented. Part Three develops the conceptual work on study practices further in relation to the activities of the Palestinian experimental university Campus in Camps. Chapter Five presents the work of Campus in Camps and explains how it relates to the theoretical discussion offered in the second part. On the basis of Stengers’ conception of practice, which discerns requirements and obligations as vital ingredients, this chapter argues that life in exile is what drives the study practices of Campus in Camps, and hence, that it is the issue of life in exile that participants are obligated to when they study. Whereas Chapter Five is focused on what is being studied in Campus in Camps, Chapter Six inquires in to the specific requirements its activities need to fulfill in order to be study practices; in other words, how the participants study. Four requirements are discerned that, taken together, seem indispensable to understand the study practices of Campus in Camps; namely, storytelling, comparing, mapmaking, and using. The concluding chapter returns to the research question and again takes up the main ideas developed in the dissertation, such as the adventure of study and the cohabitation of scientific and study practices in the university. The last two sections of the conclusion deal with two remaining issues of a more practical nature; namely, how to relate to institutionalization when working from a practice-theoretical point of view, and lastly the question of what can be done. In all, and returning to the initial problem, the dissertation asks what it means to conceive of the university as situated by and engaged with worldly questions. (shrink)

The question of affect emerges in the daily realm of routine, and survival; of your physical and existential existence. No matter what the situation or condition in life, as observed, different systems are reactive and generative, corruptible and powerful, colonisable and subversive; that is to say, all systems are subject to affects as much as they are affective, and generative of positive and negative affects within and of a system. This proposition can be tested against whatever the degree of sentience (...) or sensitivity that a system’s responsive domains or bodies may hold. This Spinozist principle of understanding – that every body has the capacity to be affected in positive and or negative ways – provides one of the core axioms for any affect ecology. But if affect is to be taken as more than an indicator of change – a barometer of the change of conditions for a system – then how do we describe affect itself? How can the changes that the notions of affect seek to express be registered or measured? How can affect be situated by and generative of a system simultaneously? This question has long been the subject of Marie-Luise Angerer’s extensive research into and analysis of the conception of affect. (shrink)

This thesis presents a social ontology. It takes its problem, the emergence of social structure and order, and the relationship of the macro and the micro within this structure, from social theory, but attempts a resolution from the perspectives of contemporary French philosophy and complexity theory. Due to its acceptance of certain presuppositions concerning the multiplicity and connectedness of all life and nature it adopts a comparative methodology that attempts a translation of complexity science to the social world. It draws (...) both this methodology and its inspiration from the work of Michel Serres. After explaining this methodology, it presents a critique of the work of those prominent philosophers of multiplicity who have written on the social: Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Manual DeLanda. Having argued for the need of a ‘non-unit’ of social organisation, it then unsuccessfully surveys the work of Michel Foucault and Gabriel Tarde in search of such a ‘non-unit’. It produces one by extracting elements from different theorists and then proceeds to offer a novel explanation of how these expectations first emerge from the ‘social noise’ and then go through a complex process of self-organisation to produce social structure. Apart from complexity theory, this explanation draws on the temporal ontologies of both Serres and Deleuze. In doing so, it argues that the social replication necessary for this self-organisation cannot be achieved through direct imitation. Instead, it draws on an idea from Stuart Kauffman and argues that this is achieved through autocatalysis. Finally, it argues that social structures and what is perceived to be social order are the effect of the codification, to varying degrees, of these emergent expectations. It concludes that this structure is at its most creative when on ‘the edge of chaos’, when at a point of social chaosmos. (shrink)

That the present day society profits from research in many areas is evident. This has stimulated a keen desire to emulate similarly advantageous contributions in other areas. It appears to imply not only a need to know how to (better) support action in general or any action, but also how to support the act of making "better" itself (better businesses, better houses, better emotions, better objectives, etc.). Developing the latter type of knowledge has proved to pose a major challenge, however. (...) Although the challenge has been taken up in areas such as social policy, economics, therapy, management, architecture, design, and others, leading to a number of responses, a complete characterisation seems still to be lacking. Such a characterisation is attempted in this article. Typical characteristics are the inclusion of non-observational experiences and a simultaneous striving for individual and collective high quality. (shrink)

The rise of the sitar from a limited accompaniment instrument used in the regional courts of Northern India to an internationally recognized cultural icon underscores its importance both as an instrument and a cultural symbol—the sitar mirrors India’s social complexity. This story encapsulates the social, political and economic trauma resulting from the dismantling of Mughal empire to the partition of Pakistan, reflecting contesting social narratives and Hindu/Muslim cultural heritages through the distinctive musical styles modern India. A musical instrument and material (...) object of contested origins, the sitar extends from wood, gourd, wire, and ivory into complex social and cultural networks. I argue that the sitar, as object, cannot be reduced to either an empirical or phenomenological entity; it is a space of potentiality, the actualization of a virtual object. I examine the sitar as both byproduct and narrative, demonstrating how it defies attempts to limit its constantly rupturing borders with imposed cognitive frames, and how materiality and philosophical systems can inform ethnographic practice. (shrink)

The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University (“‘Worlds Otherwise’: Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference,” convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss the merits, possibilities, and problems of an ontologically oriented approach. The current paper is a portion of this larger conversation— (...) a format we maintain here because, among other things, it permits a welcome level of candor and simplicity. In this forum we present two questions (written by Alberti and Witmore, along with the concluding comments) and the responses of five of the Theoretical Archaeology Group session participants. The first question asks why we think an ontological approach is important to our respective fields; the second, building upon the first set of responses, asks authors to consider the difference that pluralizing ontology might make and whether such a move is desirable given the aims of archaeology and anthropology. While several angles on ontology come through in the conversation, all share an interest in more immanent understandings that arise within specific situations and that are perhaps best described as thoroughly entangled rather than transcendent and/ or oppositional in any straightforward sense. (shrink)

The Tshwane Conference on African Information Ethics of 5-7 February 2007 forces the question, What is an African information ethics? This question is addressed with reference to the complexities of a distinctly African information ethics, taking into account the distinction between ethics and morality, and the assumptions of the language of the Tshwane Declaration on Information Ethics in Africa. Gilles Deleuze‘s concept of assem-blage, analyzed from the perspectives of Bruno Latour‘s concept of ―reassembling the social‖ and recent anthropological approaches to (...) global assemblages are put to work to investigate possibilities of an African information ethics, with special attention to the concepts of universality and African identity. The task of assembling an African information ethics is then analyzed in terms of Latour‘s call for building "livable collectives". (shrink)

This thesis proposes a re-conceptualisation of engineering practice that moves towards responding to the nature of our 21st Century (21C) predicament – the dynamic, turbulent, labyrinthine flux which has developed through the inhabitation of modern humanity in our open living world. It describes a philosophy and practices to achieve this. Key concepts are the context within which practice takes place and an integrated approach at the system level. Together these principles promote processes and practices that can design life situations which (...) are more desirable and feasible, not only for humanity but to strengthen our natural environment. This is active adaptive planning; it changes practitioners’ relationship with the world by providing spaces where the agenda is not “driven” by the “push” of the past but elicits the “pull” of future intentions. Using these approaches people are engaged collectively in processes that re-connect with context taking into account the relevant uncertainties across what are often articulated as “different” systems (e.g. social, environmental, technical) and between past, present, future. Further, it works the loops – performing ontological politics that is linking and knotting what emerges from these processes with all the potential stakeholders, mobilising resources, peers, allies and the public. The thesis identifies links between Socio-Technical Systems, Actor-Network Theory and process philosophy. This extends Actor-Network Theory which has already removed those intellectual constructs that disarticulated reality, focusing attention on practise, movement, the making and remaking of reality, or net-work-ing with the complex heterogeneous nature of agency. It envisages practitioners having an epistemology and ontology that is formed through being “out-and-about” in the world, making “translations”. Through embedding these ideas in the way engineers learn and in the processes that they use, engineering becomes a “putting through”, manoeuvring, dissolving boundaries, always being in action, moving towards sustaining with others, while recognising purpose, congruence and transforming as emergent properties. Through purposive imag(in)ing of different ways of sustainable doing and being integration can occur, reframing across methodology, epistemology, ontology and philosophy. (shrink)

This article focuses on the current trends and initiatives in human capacity building in Africa. It takes as it starting point that human capacity development is essential for Africa to become an information and know-ledge society and therefore an equal partner in the global sharing of knowledge. Four knowledge areas are identified and discussed. These are education, research and development, brain drain and information and documentation drain. The paper concludes that there is a clear understanding in Africa that its future (...) lies with education and that most African leaders have a strong political will to invest in human capacity building on the continent. It is also clear that much has been done, particularly primary education. Africa will most defi-nitely benefit from this in the long run. Problem areas remain however. These are in the needed growth of research and development and how to address the brain and information drain phenomena. (shrink)

In this article, we draw upon ‘After-ANT’ scholarship to generate openings for a shift from purely deconstructive studies of object organization to a more straightforward generation of concrete and specific alternative trajectories towards the future by way of ontological experimentation. Through careful empirical investigation of a mine and a landfill, and how these are enacted in practice in different topological registers, we show how mines and landfills are intertwined; enacted sometimes as similar and in other cases as different types of (...) objects, thus shaping the paths of becoming for those bundles of relations that become enacted as either a ‘mine object’ or a ‘landfill object’. Mapping these practices generates openings for interventions suggesting how things could be made different in some specificity; in this case, for example, the appreciation of what constitutes ‘natural resources’. The overarching purpose of this article is to intervene in current debates regarding the potential merits of drawing upon Object-Oriented Philosophy as an inspiration in critical organizational studies. While we are highly sympathetic to calls for more experimental object studies, we are hesitant towards Object-Oriented Philosophy as a source of inspiration due to its specific metaphysical underpinnings. To clarify what we find to be at stake here, we conclude the article by situating After-ANT in a wider landscape of thought, discussing the contrast between broadly pragmatist research approaches, such as After-ANT, and Object-Oriented Philosophy. Finally, we try to spell out how we believe this contrast reverberates upon how we understand the purpose and potential of critical social science. (shrink)

This special issue aims to redress the balance and to open up Gaston Bachelard's work beyond a small in-crowd of experts and aficionado’s in France. It aims to stimulate the discovery of new and understudied aspects of Bachelard’s work, including aspects of the intellectual milieu he was working in. Fortunately, for this purpose we were able to rely both on renowned Bachelard specialists, such as Hans-Jörg Rheinberg-er, Cristina Chimisso and Dominique Lecourt, as well as on a number of younger scholars (...) who are discovering their work in a different intellectual context. At the same time we also want to reassess the value of this oeuvre, which also entails examining the reasons and causes of the relative neglect of Bachelard’s work in recent times. Has it exhausted its possibilities? Does it have intrinsic limitations that have contributed to the eclipse, as some influential, mainly French, philoso-phers have more or less explicitly suggested? (shrink)