Robert Rosenberger

A Case Study in the Applied Philosophy of Imaging: The Synaptic Vesicle Debate

Thinkers from a variety of fields analyze the roles of imaging technologies in science and consider their implications for many issues, from our conception of selfhood to the authority of science. In what follows, I encourage scholars to develop an applied philosophy of imaging, that is, to collect these analyses of scientific imaging and to reflect on how they can be made useful for ongoing scientific work. As an example of this effort, I review concepts developed in Don Ihde’s phenomenology of technology and refigure them for use in the analysis of scientific practice. These concepts are useful for drawing out the details of the interpretive frameworks scientists bring to laboratory images. Next, I apply these ideas to a contemporary debate in neurobiology over the interpretation of images of neurons which have been frozen at the moment of transmitter release. This reveals directions for further thought for the study of neurotransmission.

The sudden experience of the computer

The experience of computer use can be productively articulated with concepts developed in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy. Building on the insights of classical phenomenologists, Ihde has advanced a sophisticated view of the ways humans relate to technology. I review and expand on his notions of “technological mediation,” “embodiment,” and “multistability,” and apply them to the experience of computer interface. In particular, I explore the experience of using a computer that fails to work properly. A revealing example is the experience of a user who suddenly and unexpectedly encounters a slowly-loading webpage while using the Internet. This phenomenological framework provides an account of the ways a suddenly failing technology changes our relationships to the device, to the world, and to ourselves, and it also suggests how this experience can be usefully reconceptualized.

How simulations fail

Abstract‘The problem with simulations is that they are doomed to succeed.’ So runs a common criticism of simulations—that they can be used to ‘prove’ anything and are thus of little or no scientific value. While this particular objection represents a minority view, especially among those who work with simulations in a scientific context, it raises a difficult question: what standards should we use to differentiate a simulation that fails from one that succeeds? In this paper we build on a structural analysis of simulation developed in previous work to provide an evaluative account of the variety of ways in which simulations do fail. We expand the structural analysis in terms of the relationship between a simulation and its real-world target emphasizing the important role of aspects intended to correspond and also those specifically intended not to correspond to reality. The result is an outline both of the ways in which simulations can fail and the scientific importance of those various forms of failure.

The problem with hands-free dashboard cellphones

Lawmakers misunderstand user experience of technology interface.

Quick-Freezing Philosophy: an Analysis of Imaging Technologies in Neurobiology

In what follows, I offer a general methodology for the analysis of the roles that technologically produced images play in scientific debate. This requires a review of insights into the philosophy of technology emerging from a budding perspective called ‘postphenomenology’. This perspective, which amalgamates central aspects of the phenomenological and pragmatic traditions of philosophy and applies them to issues of technology, offers a rich collection of concepts for the project of articulating the ways that technologies mediate people’s experience of the world. The methodology I provide below applies postphenomenological insights for both the purposes of understanding practices of image interpretation in science, and potentially offering novel research directions for contemporary scientific work.

The importance of generalized bodily habits for a future world of ubiquitous computing

In a future world of ubiquitous computing, in which humans interact with computerized technologies even more frequently and in even more situations than today, interface design will have increased importance. One feature of interface that I argue will be especially relevant is what I call abstract relational strategies. This refers to an approach (in both a bodily and conceptual sense) toward the use of a technology, an approach that is general enough to be applied in many different concrete scenarios. Such an abstract manner of approach is relevant, for example, when an interface design for a device to which users are already accustomed is applied to an entirely different device (such as a device used for a completely different purpose). To articulate this idea, I explore the history of keyboards, and consider how the habits of interface with one kind (e.g., piano keyboards) have historically enabled some users to approach other technologies fitted with similar keyboard interface (e.g., typewriters, electronic instrumentation). I conclude by brainstorming ways that abstract relational strategies, applicable to a variety of different devices, will have increased importance in a future world in which computing is even more ubiquitous than today.

What kind of science is simulation

Is simulation some new kind of science? We argue that instead simulation fits smoothly into existing scientific practice, but does so in several importantly different ways. Simulations in general, and computer simulations in particular, ought to be understood as techniques which, like many scientific techniques, can be employed in the service of various and diverse epistemic goals. We focus our attentions on the way in which simulations can function as (i) explanatory and (ii) predictive tools. We argue that a wide variety of simulations, both computational and physical, are best conceived in terms of a set of common features: initial or input conditions, a mechanism or set of rules, and a set of results or output conditions. Studying simulations in these terms yields a new understanding of their character as well as a body of normative recommendations for the care and feeding of scientific simulations.

An Argument Against "No-Look Texting" While Driving

Multiple countries across the globe and thirty-nine states in the U.S. have banned the act of sending “text messages” on handheld cell phones while behind the wheel of a car. The scientific research shows texting to result in substantial driver distraction. And a rough consensus between science, policy, and public opinion appears to be emerging that the distraction caused by the acts of physically typing into a phone and looking at a screen constitutes a significant threat to traffic safety. But as cellular phone technologies develop, as policies are formed, and as user practices become established, new issues of concern are emerging. One concern regards what could be called “no-look” texting while driving. Hands-free no-look texting while driving involves the use of technology that can translate text into audio, and voice into text.

Bridging Philosophy of Technology and Neurobiological Research: Interpreting Images From the “Slam Freezer”

The swiftly growing field of neurobiological research utilizes highly advanced technologies (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging, electron microscopy) to mediate between investigators and the brains they investigate. Here, the author analyzes a device called the “slam freezer” that quick-freezes neurons to be studied under the microscope. Employing insights from Don Ihde’s philosophy of technology, work that carefully amalgamates continental philosophy with philosophy of science, the author draws out the practices of interpretation in slam-freezing research. This interdisciplinary approach to understanding scientific methodology sets the stage for further philosophical investigation of research in neuroscience.

Deflating the overblown accounts of technology: a review of Don Ihde’s Ironic Technics : Automatic Press/VIP, 2008,

The field of philosophy of technology is populated by a variety of views of how the general technological character of society shapes and guides our lives. Debates have waged between dystopian accounts, which see technologies to generally have a negative impact, and utopian accounts, which predict that technological advance will solve our problems and improve our lives. Also, in contrast to both of these positions is an instrumentalist view, which argues that technologies merely serve their users’ ends, becoming positive or negative only with respect to the ends to which they are used. Against all of these general accounts sits Don Ihde’s Ironic Technics, a short collection of essays that highlights technology’s concrete specificity, variability, context dependency, and its tendency to defy prediction. Ironic Technics is composed of four independent essays, each addressing from a different angle the complex interrelations between technologies, users, and their cultural and historical contexts. Ihde has a penchant for upending established frameworks of thought that have become overextended in their claims about technology. He finds the counterexamples, unconsidered consequences, and hidden assumptions, which undermine totalizing accounts. Yet the book’s dividends do not come only in the form of negative arguments and deflations. Ihde traces a number of trends, ties together examples that seem at first unrelated, and develops some useful concepts along the way. As a whole, the book makes for a quick read, with its approachable style and abundant examples—from windmills, to medical imaging, to WMDs. Those working within the field of philosophy of technology will find the book to be a usefully concise version of Ihde’s counterpoint deflations of totalizing accounts of technology. Engineers and others working in technology design will find the book of particular use for its punchy and original thoughts. In the first of the four essays, entitled ‘‘Stupidity in the Knowledge Society,’’ Ihde analyzes a cluster of accounts of Western society which claim we have moved past an industrial mode and into one which primarily deals with the transfer of information. Examples of this line of thought include Peter Drucker’s notion of ‘‘the knowledge society,’’ Alvin Toffler’s ‘‘information society,’’ and the common ‘‘post-industrial society.’’ Ihde is suspicious of this move, stating ‘‘part of what I am trying to do, is to wean us from the current hype and tendency to overgeneralize and romanticize the new’’ (7). While he agrees that many features of our society have changed with the ascension of information technologies, he also reminds us about those which have not, and considers whether all changes have been exclusively for the better. His strategy in this chapter is to list a variety of technologies, historical moments, and philosophical views which at first seem unconnected— including Cold War nuclear simulations, WMDs, and Heidegger’s critique of technology—which he then gradually strings back together in their relation to the knowledge society. A central observation Ihde makes is that while the contemporary western world bears many features of a knowledge society, these features come in addition to—and not in place of—those of our industrial society. Our industrial society has not been replaced, and its problems, such as atmospheric pollution, remain. In addition, Ihde points out the ways that central features of the knowledge society, such as computing and the Internet, were born from military projects whose effects are still present, such as nuclear proliferation. R. Rosenberger (&) Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA e-mail: estragon10@yahoo.com