In this Conversation session we explored the two contrasting philosophical perspectives of Pragmatism and Inventivism. Pragmatism tends to focus on technical objects as fulfilling a purpose for mankind in a concrete situational context. In contrast, the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon introduces an Inventivist philosophical position in which technical objects a) have their own mode of being called technicity, b) are becoming more open, and c) should not be reduced to a purpose, as that hinders their co-emergence with mankind - a (...) problematic position with regards to design. The Conversation took the form of exploring an imaginary design case revolving around using the technology of a wildlife camera to design for a dinner table setting. Two imaginary design teams were formed, each operating in a philosophical 'clearing' representing one of the perspectives. Moderators supported each team. Each team had a wildlife camera at their disposal to work with, which at the same time captured each session at selected points. Four participants joined the Conversation session, two per clearing. Halfway through the session the participants reflected intermediately and then one each swapped clearings. The last 10 minutes were spent on a joint reflection. This exploration indicates how the differences in philosophical positions play out when entering concrete design consideration. (shrink)

This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food security" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through which non-scientific notions become (...) part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process. (shrink)

Through a comparison of the logic of socio-economic and technical development in Marx with the logic of technical invention in Simondon, I argue the thesis that worker’s democracy is the forgotten political form that offers a viable alternative to both capitalism and Soviet-style Communism, the dominant political régimes of the Cold War period that have not yet been surpassed. Marx’s detailed account of the capitalist technical logic from handwork through manufacture to industry is a logic of continuous concretization in Simondon’s (...) sense. Its immanent teleology is the exclusion of living labor through automation such that freedom is understood as free time apart from labor and technical activity. A post-capitalist society would require a conception of freedom in labor, such as that held by the early Marx, that demands a leap from this logic of concretization to a new technical object. Such a new technical object would require workers to engage in technical activity that continues the activity of invention in Simondon’s sense. Through these interpretive and argumentative links, Simondon’s possibility of transindividual technical activity and knowledge can be seen as, in socio-political terms, aiming at workplace democracy. In philosophical terms, it aims to displace the priority of thought and imagination over activity and to locate both within an ongoing impersonal task which contains the possibility of individual and social self-realization. (shrink)

Through a comparison of the logic of socio-economic and technical development in Marx with the logic of technical invention in Simondon, I argue the thesis that worker’s democracy is the forgotten political form that offers a viable alternative to both capitalism and Soviet-style Communism, the dominant political régimes of the Cold War period that have not yet been surpassed. Marx’s detailed account of the capitalist technical logic from handwork through manufacture to industry is a logic of continuous concretization in Simondon’s (...) sense. Its immanent teleology is the exclusion of living labor through automation such that freedom is understood as free time apart from labor and technical activity. A post-capitalist society would require a conception of freedom in labor, such as that held by the early Marx, that demands a leap from this logic of concretization to a new technical object. Such a new technical object would require workers to engage in technical activity that continues the activity of invention in Simondon’s sense. Through these interpretive and argumentative links, Simondon’s possibility of transindividual technical activity and knowledge can be seen as, in socio-political terms, aiming at workplace democracy. In philosophical terms, it aims to displace the priority of thought and imagination over activity and to locate both within an ongoing impersonal task which contains the possibility of individual and social self-realization. (shrink)