Don Ihde

The conflict of interpretations : essays in hermeneutics

This collection brings together twenty-two essays by Paul Ricoeur under the topics of structuralism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and religion. In dramatic conciseness, the essays illuminate the work of one of the leading philosophers of the day. Those interested in Ricoeurs development of the philosophy of language will find rich and suggestive reading. But the diversity of essays also speaks beyond the confines of philosophy to linguists, theologians, psychologists, and psychoanalysts.

The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination

Earlier in the twentieth century, literary theorists developed the notion of an “intentional fallacy.” This was the notion that the (meaning of a text lay with the author’s intentions: if these could be uncovered, then the meaning of the text was established. One can easily see how, if this is the only true way to establish meaning, there could be difficulties. What if the author was long dead? Or, even if the author was living, how could one tell that he or she was telling the truth? What of unintended meanings, or meanings that fit but were not thought of in advance? Thus, the intentional fallacy recognizes such difficulties and cannot be considered an adequate account of interpretation.

Has the Philosophy of Technology Arrived? A State-of-the-Art Review*

Using the occasion of the publication of a Blackwell anthology in the philosophy of technology, Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition (2003), as a key to the contemporary role of this subdiscipline, this article reviews the current state‐of‐this‐art. Both philosophy of science and philosophy of technology are twentieth century inventions, but each has followed a somewhat different set of philosophical traditions and pursued sometimes divergent questions. Here the primary developments of recent philosophy of technology are examined with emphasis upon issues which might also be of greater interest to philosophers of science. These include epistemological, but also environmental and cultural issues. The bibliographical spread includes references to some fifty recent books in the field.

The Structure of Technology Knowledge

There are several dimensions of technology knowledge: (l) There is knowledge about technologies. That is the engineerÕs or technicianÕs knowledge, the knowledge of how a machine is made and how it functions. (2) There is what could be called theoretical technology knowledge, that is the knowledge of the physical, chemical or electrical laws and principles which allow any given technology the capacity to do what it does. This is the scientistÕs or scientific engineerÕs knowledge. (3) But there is also a different kind of technology knowledge Ð knowledge through technologies. This is a special kind of praxical or use knowledge which runs through a wide range of human actions. And it is this kind of knowledge which has been the focus of my own work for some two plus decades. And, indeed, in this paper, since I focus upon scientific knowledge which is instrumentally generated, there is a sense in which I am illustrating another point I have often emphasized. That is, much, if not most, scientific knowledge is Ôtechnologically dependent.Õ It is ÔconstructedÕ through the use of instruments which are technologies. This is then a kind of inversion of the more standard notions that technologies are derived from science or scientific theories, rather it is the notion that scientific knowledge is instrumentally dependent upon technologies. Knowledge through technology has historically often fallen prey to disparate utopian or dystopian interpretations which, at the extremes, take Baconian or Marlowean directions. Either the knowledge (and power) which we attain through technologies is thought to be able to provide a kind of technological salvation for human shortcomings and ills Ð knowledge through technologies is knowledge/power Ð or it is a kind of Faustean hubris by which we play god and thus tempt the gods. The basis of this polar, binary interpretation lies in a contradictory desire which we often bring to technologies: on the one hand we want the powers, the seemingly supra-human or enhanced powers which machines provide, and through which we could enact upon our world the desires we have. Or, on the other hand, we want these powers without responsibly accepting the actual roles of the technologies which we employ, which always also reflexively co-opt our bodies and desires. We end up echoing the Sartrean hopeless desire to both be Ôin-itself Õ and Ôfor-itself.Õ To fall into such extremities, I argue, beclouds the insights into Òthe things themselves,Ó the technologies in actual use. I have argued that there is a very mundane sense in which every technology Ð at least every ÔinterestingÕ technology Ð non-neutrally transforms

The Historical-Ontological Priority of Technology Over Science

The thesis I wish to explore in this essay is that there is a significant sense in which technology may be seen to be both ontologically and historically prior to science. There is, of course, an obvious and trivial sense in which this claim may be regarded as true. If technologies in the broadest and most concrete sense involve humans and their uses of tools and artifacts, then at the least one can say that technology in this sense is both universal and was probably involved at the time of the emergence of the human species. There are no instances of societies, cultures, or human groups which do not use tools and artifacts in their relations with the natural environment.

Sense and significance

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Technology and prognostic predicaments

As societies become increasingly technologised, the need for careful and critical assessment rises. However, attempts to assess or normatively evaluate technological development invariably meet with an antinomy: both structurally and historically, technologies display multistable possibilities regarding uses, effects, side effects and other outcomes. Philosophers, usually expected to play applied ethics roles, often come to the scene after these effects are known. But others who participate at the research and development stages find even more difficulties with prognosis. Recent work on ‘revenge’ effects (Tenner) and negative side effects (Kevles) are examined, as well as several cases of philosophers in ‘R&D’ roles. After sketching the antinomy,I outline a heuristic pragmatics of prognosis that addresses this quandary.

The Experience of Technology: Human-Machine Relations

The question of technology has been posed in many ways. That is perhaps not surprising in that the presence of technology is so pervasive. Treatments of technology span a diversity of views in philosophy as well. For example, there is a growing literature, often from the analytic tradition, which devotes itself to the question of artificial intelligence and the puzzle over whether or not machines can or could ’think’. There are others, I would term them romantic, who see in technology a growing menace to humankind’s basic organic relationship to ’nature’. Still others, Utopian in hope, who see quite contrarily the only possible development of humankind in terms of increasingly sophisticated technologies toward the day of a ’new Athens’ in which machines finally are the slaves which allow us to develop a greater culture. Others see in certain kinds and uses of technology the potential for even greater alienation and exploitation.

Heidegger’s Philosophy of Technology

Among the few philosophers to date to have taken technology seriously, it should be apparent that Martin Heidegger is a pioneer in this field. He was among the first to raise technology to a central concern for philosophy and he was among the first to see in it a genuine ontological issue. This is the case in spite of the dominant and sometimes superficial interpretations of Heidegger which see in him only a negative attitude to technology.

Image technologies and traditional culture

The thesis explored here is that ‘image technologies’ prominent in todays communications technologies are acidic to traditional cultures. I parallel examples from the history of early modern science and its optical instrumentation with the rise of cinema and television and other audio‐visual technologies to show a similar history and effect. One dominant contemporary phenomenon which occurs through image technologies is the appearance of pluriculture, a unique mediation of the multi‐cultural. The challenge of pluriculture vis‐a‐vis the contemporary forms of reaction to the phenomenon is also examined.