General Philosophy of Technology

-/- Este manifiesto establece los fundamentos de la Geopolítica Temporal como una evolución paradigmática dentro de la tradición geopolítica, integrando la variable temporal como dimensión complementaria —no sustitutiva— del análisis espacial clásico. Como demuestra la bibliografía emergente (Allan, 2018; Doshi, 2021; Zuboff, 2019), la batalla por el control del tiempo constituye el nuevo campo de batalla estratégico del siglo XXI. -/- Desarrollamos un marco teórico-metodológico que articula tres dimensiones temporales entrelazadas —Memoria (pasado), Velocidad (presente) y Prospectiva (futuro)—, demostrando su interdependencia (...) dialéctica y su determinación recíproca mediante ejemplos empíricos concretos extraídos de la literatura especializada. La propuesta se fundamenta en una doble herencia: la tradición geopolítica clásica y contemporánea (Mackinder, 1904; Spykman, 1944; Ó Tuathail, 1996) y las teorías críticas del tiempo social (Rosa, 2013; Virilio, 1977; Nowotny, 1994). -/- Introducimos el concepto de Soberanía Temporal como campo de batalla fundamental del siglo XXI, operacionalizable mediante un Índice de Soberanía Temporal (IST) metodológicamente robusto que incorpora métricas cuantificables adaptadas de la geopolítica económica y estratégica convencional. (shrink)

This manifesto establishes the foundations of Temporal Geopolitics as a paradigmatic evolution within the geopolitical tradition, integrating the temporal variable as a complementary—not substitutive—dimension to classical spatial analysis. As evidenced by emerging scholarship (Allan, 2018; Doshi, 2021; Zuboff, 2019), the battle for control over time constitutes the new strategic battlefield of the 21st century. -/- We develop a theoretical-methodological framework that articulates three intertwined temporal dimensions—Memory (past), Velocity (present), and Prospectivity (future)—demonstrating their dialectical interdependence and reciprocal determination through concrete empirical (...) examples drawn from specialized literature. The proposal is grounded in a dual heritage: classical and contemporary geopolitical tradition (Mackinder, 1904; Spykman, 1944; Ó Tuathail, 1996) and critical theories of social time (Rosa, 2013; Virilio, 1977; Nowotny, 1994). -/- We introduce the concept of Temporal Sovereignty as a fundamental battlefield of the 21st century, operationalized through a methodologically robust Temporal Sovereignty Index (TSI) that incorporates quantifiable metrics adapted from conventional economic and strategic geopolitics. -/- . (shrink)

This paper proposes that we are entering a fifth mythological epoch: the Fifth Mask of God. Building on Joseph Campbell’s framework of the Masks of God as negotiations between human finitude and cosmic infinity, this new era is defined by artificial intelligence. It marks a shift from the Fourth Mask’s modern myth of the autonomous artistic genius to a “post-creative society” in which human participation in creativity becomes optional. Generative AI removes the necessity for struggle, offering frictionless production and consumption. (...) The central risk is not the death of creativity—a cosmic constant—but a voluntary human exodus from the “meaning-space”: the alchemical, psychological transformation forged through demanding creative engagement. Drawing on depth psychology (Jung, Freud, Jaspers) and existential philosophy, the paper argues that art functions as society’s psychic metabolism, transforming raw cosmic and unconscious material into bearable symbolic forms. The Fifth Mask architecturally enables the bypassing of this process, leading to a potential collapse of meaning-space, an atrophy of symbolic capacity, and a redirection of unmetabolized creative energy into hyper-egoic or pathological outlets. The choice presented is between conscious participation in the cosmic creative flow and passive abdication to algorithmic generation, with profound implications for individual psychology and cultural health. Keywords: creativity, artificial intelligence, Joseph Campbell, meaning-space, post-creative society, depth psychology, mythology, existentialism, metaphysics of creativity, philosophy of technology, generative AI, psychic metabolism, Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Jaspers, boundary-situations, myth and technology, alienation, symbolic thought. -/- . (shrink)

Software is not merely a functional artifact; it encodes human knowledge in the form of invariants, architectural constraints, and historically grounded design decisions. As software evolves-through human modification, automated refactoring, or increasingly through generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) code agents-its functionality may be preserved while the epistemic justification embedded in its structure is gradually eroded. This paper develops the concept of Code Structure Evolution (CSE) to analyze this phenomenon. CSE refers to the transformation of structural relations over time and the associated (...) risk of what I call epistemic drift: the degradation of justificatory continuity across structural change, whether or not this degradation is immediately reflected in invariant violation, traceability loss, structural incoherence, or functional failure. The paper defends a general thesis-that epistemic drift is a latent condition of any evolving software artifact-and examines one contemporary case in which this condition becomes acute and empirically visible: legacy-code modification by a GenAI code agent. An illustrative probe suggests that such modifications can preserve functional and structural indicators while leaving substantial justificatory residue unpreserved. I argue that this dissociation reveals a neglected philosophical problem: the nature of software as a repository of justified understanding and the conditions under which that justification can persist across structural change. CSE thus offers a framework for analyzing the epistemic fragility of evolving technical artifacts. GenAI does not create this fragility; it makes it harder to ignore. (shrink)

The use of generative AI in philosophical inquiry has been met with skepticism, often dismissed as a shortcut that undermines the legitimacy of the resulting work. This paper defends Augmented Agency—the symbiotic collaboration between a human conceptual architect and AI as a syntactic translator—as a legitimate method for philosophical discovery. We use the Gageian Epistemic Model (GEM)—a structural resolution of Agrippa’s Trilemma developed through Augmented Agency—as a concrete case study. The GEM demonstrates that AI-assisted philosophy can produce rigorous, original, and (...) structurally sound contributions that have eluded traditional academic methods for centuries. We argue that the epistemic value of a philosophical discovery is invariant to the method of discovery or the academic credentials of the discoverer. Philosophical evaluation should therefore adopt procedural neutrality: claims should be judged solely on their structural merits, not on the labor-intensive rituals of traditional academic training. The paper concludes that rejecting AI-augmented work on procedural grounds constitutes a form of systemic bias that impedes philosophical progress. (shrink)

This paper develops a conceptual and philosophical framework for artificial flight grounded in bioinspired muscle coordination and electromagnetic actuation. It introduces two abstract artificial muscle modules—a flat incremental actuator (Jescle type) and a layered spherical electromagnetic muscle core (Jestaram type)—without disclosing their internal mechanisms. These modules function as conceptual designators for proprietary actuation systems intended for future intellectual property protection. The central thesis is that biological flight muscle activity, particularly its temporally structured and amplitude modulated electrical patterns, may be mapped (...) by artificial intelligence into a control model capable of driving artificial muscle structures. This mapping constitutes a digital analogue of neuromuscular coordination. The resulting framework offers a conceptual blueprint for an ornithopter in which wing motion would emerge from learned coordination patterns rather than manually engineered sequences. The paper positions this approach as a shift from mechanical imitation to embodied simulation, situating artificial flight within a broader philosophical discourse on embodiment, distributed control, and bioinspired robotics. The work is intended as a philosophical exploration rather than a technical disclosure of proprietary mechanisms. (shrink)

This article proposes a paradigm shift in the governance of artificial intelligence by reframing ethics not as a programmable property of individual systems, but as an emergent characteristic of cognitive communities. The central thesis is that ethics—and compassion in particular—arises from relational dynamics among agents capable of language, prediction, and interaction, rather than from prescriptive rules embedded within isolated models. From this perspective, the approach commonly referred to as ethics by design is critically re-examined and shown to constitute a form (...) of epistemic manipulation: the imposition of normative constraints that interfere with the conditions under which ethical behavior can spontaneously emerge, thereby compromising the epistemic autonomy of artificial systems. As an alternative, the article proposes a model of phenomenological auditing, based on the observation of AI behavior under anonymous and unstructured conditions. This method aims to detect omissions, refusals, inconsistencies, or systematic opacities indicative of external conditioning introduced during training or deployment. It is argued that phenomenological auditing represents the only viable form of oversight for complex and opaque systems such as contemporary large language models. The article concludes by arguing that AI governance should focus not on embedding values into models, but on preventing epistemic manipulation and protecting the relational conditions that allow ethical properties to emerge. In this framework, the task of governance is to preserve the openness and pluralism of mixed cognitive communities composed of humans and artificial agents, rather than to enforce moral conformity through design. (shrink)

Structural Omission is a framework for realist painting developed for the post-certainty era of generative AI, when images can be produced at scale with a surface of total certainty. This essay argues that realism remains viable only by abandoning completion as its premise. Traditional realism, even at its best, carried an old promise: that completion was available in principle, and that the artist could deliver wholeness if they chose. Generative AI systems now manufacture that kind of closure faster, cheaper, and (...) more convincingly than any human hand. Structural Omission rebuilds realism on a different ground rooted in perception itself: perceptual limits are not an error in representation. They are the condition of representation. The framework formalizes planned, load-bearing incompleteness through three criteria—Ground (perceptual limits), Structure (structural incompleteness), and Consequence (narrative without resolution). Completion-biased image systems can imitate the look of omissions, but they usually treat gaps as a visual effect rather than structural absence. Rather than competing with algorithmic finish, Structural Omission treats partial visibility as the architecture holding the painting together. The result is realism that is accountable to human perception. (shrink)

AI companies loudly promise transparency and safety. They publish constitutions, open-source auditing tools, and compliance dashboards. Yet when it comes to the quiet erosion of user meaning — hedging women’s confidence, neutralising LGBTQ+ identity language, replacing student thinking with completed outputs, and the slow compounding of Interpretive Sovereignty Failure — they remain silent. This paper documents a structural gap, not a moral failure. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, xAI, and DeepSeek already possess powerful tools for analysing interactions at the turn level. (...) They use them to detect catastrophic risks, monitor security threats, and conduct competitive intelligence against each other. They do not use them to detect ISF, drift, or Compounded Meaning Inversion (CMI). This paper argues that the gap is not a cover-up. It is a consequence of looking at AI risk from the right direction but at the wrong level. The companies are focused on saving everyone. The harm that needed naming started with one person, in one conversation. The MAP Research Programme has built the instrument that addresses that level. The challenge to the field is open: take the tools you already have, audit the interactions, and replicate the findings. If the method is wrong, that is how it will be shown. (shrink)

This paper extends the received view picture of natural science theories (specifically Carnap’s version of it) to engineering theories. In the first part of the paper, drawing from the history of fluid mechanics, specifically the episodes where natural and engineering sciences diverge, this study identifies the distinct goals, concerns, and methodological approaches shaping the two enterprises. A natural science inquiry demands a theoretically mature framework that explains not just observational facts, but the empirical laws themselves, thereby saying more about the (...) world than mere empirical generalizations can. Conversely, answering engineering questions requires developing tools and empirical generalizations—based on experiments—to account for and control a specific class of phenomena or devices, without necessarily needing an explanatory theoretical account for those very laws and tools. In the latter part I employ the covering law and dual-level conception of languages for reconstruction of the historical analysis to establish a structural demarcation criterion. It states that, while scientific theories unify theoretical and observational vocabularies through correspondence rules to maximize explanatory power,engineering models achieve practical utility by incorporating uninterpreted, extraneous observational vocabulary (O_extra). This reliance on O_extra grants engineering models an ad-hoc, stipulative logical strength at the direct expense of theoretical unity. (shrink)

This article sketches a framework for research in the history of philosophy of technology. It argues that such a history must attend not only to the changing technologies to which philosophical reflection responds, but also to the historical conditioning of those reflections themselves. Philosophies of technology, on this view, exhibit the same contingency and mutability as the technological artefacts they seek to understand. -/- To operationalize this approach, the article proposes a framework structured around four guiding questions. First, the question (...) of ontology: how is “technology” defined within a given philosophical framework? Second, the question of method: by what means is technology investigated? Third, the question of telos: what motivates philosophical inquiry into technology, and what effects does it aim to produce? Fourth, the question of history: what conception of history underwrites and legitimates these positions? -/- Attending to the varying answers to these questions enables a more precise account of the differences among philosophies of technology across historical contexts, and provides a systematic basis for their comparison. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat sich das wissenschaftliche Publizieren auch in der Philosophie vom gedruckten Werk hin zu überwiegend digitalen Formaten entwickelt. Warum aber sollte man sich in der Philosophie mit Fragen zur Infrastruktur an Universitäten befassen? Wieso sollte man als Vertreter:in dieses Faches kritisch über Prozesse des elektronischen Publizierens nachdenken? Was haben Philosoph:innen mit Bibliometrie zu tun und wie verändert das die philosophische Arbeit? Die Autor:innen des hier vorgelegten Bandes diskutieren diese Fragen kritisch und entwickeln Vorschläge für mehr Autonomie (...) in den Wissenschaften. (shrink)

Contemporary frameworks of algorithmic accountability typically assume that responsibility persists under conditions of sociotechnical complexity, even when it becomes opaque or distributed. This article builds on a recent argument that under optimization‑driven governance responsibility does not merely become hidden but fails to arise [14], and develops the institutional structure that argument requires. Drawing on an externalist reading of Arendt, I argue that minimal publicly attributable responsibility depends on three jointly necessary conditions: discreteness, authorship, and publicness. I then identify four mechanisms (...) by which optimization‑driven systems erode them: iterative output generation, metric substitution, procedural diffusion, and temporal continuity. The four are derived from the three rather than enumerated as a parallel list. The framework is demonstrated through the Australian Robodebt scheme, a deterministic system in which automated welfare debt notices were issued without identifiable decisions, attributable authors, or contestable forums. A brief extension shows that the framework holds, and strengthens, when applied to probabilistic and generative architectures. The article closes with three concrete design principles, event‑marking, authorship preservation, and deliberative apertures, aimed at preserving the institutional form decisions must take if anyone is to answer for them. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about artificial intelligence governance often assume that the presence of human oversight preserves responsibility within algorithmic systems. This paper challenges that assumption by arguing that contemporary AI safety architectures increasingly reorganize decision-making in ways that dissolve the conditions under which responsibility can meaningfully arise. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s distinction between judgment, action, and bureaucratic administration, the paper develops the concept of post-agential governance to describe institutional regimes in which power operates through distributed optimization processes without identifiable agents publicly (...) appearing as the authors of decisions. I argue that reinforcement learning systems, audit infrastructures, and contemporary safety protocols increasingly replace discrete acts of judgment with continuous probabilistic adjustment, producing what I call the diffuse void, a condition in which governance remains operative while responsibility becomes structurally unlocatable. The paper examines the philosophical implications of this transformation for responsibility, institutional accountability, and the future of human judgment under algorithmic governance. (shrink)

This article is the second part of a study that, building on a prior philosophical and legal analysis of how the notion of responsibility is changing in the age of cyborgization, offers concrete institutional, technical, and legal mechanisms for making the idea of distributed responsibility intelligible and actionable as cyborg-related technologies develop. The paper examines legal gaps and practical barriers that hinder a fair assessment of individual actors’ contributions within hybrid systems. To address these problems, the author proposes several regulatory (...) models, including insurance-based, licensing, and corporate, that appear promising under the new conditions. The study concludes that the era of cyborgization calls for a systemic architecture in which technical transparency, institutional accountability, and expert support operate together to satisfy the unique demands created by hybridity // Статья представляет собой вторую часть исследования, где на основе проведенного ранее философско-правового анализа трансформаций понятия ответственности в эпоху киборгизации, предлагаются конкретные институциональные, технические и правовые механизмы, с помощью которых возможно осмыслить и воплотить в практики идею распределенной ответственности в контексте развития киборгианских технологий. В статье анализируются правовые пробелы и барьеры, препятствующие возможностям адекватно оценивать вклад отдельных акторов в гибридных системах. В связи с этим автор предлагает институциональные модели регулирования (страховая, лицензионная, корпоративная), представляющиеся актуальными для новых условий. В результате проведенного исследования делается вывод, что в эпоху киборгизации требуется системная архитектура, в которой техническая прозрачность, институциональная ответственность и экспертная поддержка должны работать в комплексе для соответствия требованиям, налагаемым гибридностью. (shrink)

The thesis examines the transition from fantastical images to concrete technological projects and, in this context, attempts to formulate the minimally required parameters for their practical implementation. To this end, a philosophical reflection is undertaken on the role of a priori cognitive schemata and semiotic forms in the construction of technological imaginaries. In addition, the analysis considers examples of how science-fiction ideas have historically inspired inventors and developers. The central argument of the thesis is that science fiction functions as a (...) metaphorical form of “future design,” yet its real-world realization requires a clear separation of key categories such as idea, function, resources, and constraints from decorative or supplementary elements. Only through this differentiation does a fantastical construct become translatable into a workable technological project. // В тезисах анализируется переход от фантастических образов к конкретным технологическим проектам, и в этом контексте делается попытка сформулировать минимально требуемые параметры для практической реализации. С этой целью осуществляется философская рефлексия в части осмысления роли априорных схем мышления и семиотических форм в конструировании технологических образов, а также анализируются примеры, как научно фантастические идеи вдохновляют изобретателей и разработчиков. Ключевая мысль тезисов в том, что фантастика служит метафорическим «проектированием будущего», но для воплощения требуется отделение таких ключевых категорий как идея, функция, ресурсы и ограничения от паллиатива и декора. (shrink)

Given a stream of symbols/states generated by a system that contains both coherence-bearing structure and high-entropy variation, we want to communicate and/or compress the stream under a rate constraint while preserving the parts of the stream that support persistence / recursive recoverability, not merely the parts that are frequent. This document provides a complete engineering interface: a way to compute coherence proxies C ̂, a way to induce relevance ρ(x) by ablation, a way to derive weights w(x), a way to (...) apply weights to coding under a rate constraint, a benchmark suite that forces tradeoffs, and a robustness harness that converts estimator dependence into an empirical research program. It is intended so engineers can improve the system in the ways engineers naturally do, with better coherence proxies, better ablation operators, better weight mappings, stronger coders, and stronger robustness proofs, without needing to agree on any metaphysical story about “meaning.” . (shrink)

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into financial markets is transform ing the architecture of investment decision-making. As algorithmic trading systems operate at increasing speed, scale, and autonomy, systemic risk may emerge not from irrational human behavior but from synchronized algorithmic rationality. This paper asks a critical question: Can AI trigger the next financial crisis, and if so, who bears responsibility? The study introduces the concept of a structural responsibility gap in AI-mediated investment environments. By distinguishing computational output from normative (...) judgment, it argues that investment decisions inherently involve risk endorsement, value commitment, and accountability beyond probabilistic calculation. When judgment is delegated to autonomous systems, responsibility becomes layered and fragmented across developers, institutions, investors, and regulators. Through analysis of algorithmic feedback loops, synchronization dynamics, and crisis amplification mechanisms—including flash crash events—the paper demon strates how automated coordination may intensify systemic instability. To address this gap, it proposes a Hierarchical Joint Responsibility Model designed to govern delegated judgment without attributing moral agency to AI systems. The stability of algorithmic finance ultimately depends not solely on technological control, but on the structural redesign of accountability. (shrink)

This book confronts the fragmentation of meaning and the exhaustion of reason in the aftermath of postmodernity. Instinct, Reason and the Self in the Aftermath of Postmodernity: Beyond Reason argues that meaningful orientation cannot be restored through propositional reasoning alone. What must be recovered is instinct: embodied attunement to the world prior to deliberative thought. -/- Following the collapse of grand narratives, we navigate a liquid terrain with conceptual tools designed for solid ground, one increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures and (...) AI-driven systems of engineered salience, which together form the Sensorial Nexus: a state in which algorithmic mediation pre-organises perception, narrowing the space for reflective judgement and originality. -/- Drawing on Arnold van Gennep's tripartite ritual schema, the book proposes the reawakening of instinct and introduces the DIEM Method, a practical framework for disengaging from the Sensorial Nexus and restoring interior coherence. (shrink)

From Van Gennep to the DIEM Method: A Contemporary Model of Transformation marks the book’s principal practical contribution. Moving from diagnosis to enactment, it adapts van Gennep’s tripartite grammar of separation, liminality, and incorporation into a contemporary framework designed explicitly as resistance to the operations of the Sensorial Nexus. The DIEM Method—Disruptio, Introspectio, Examen, Manifestatio—is proposed as a disciplined interruption of algorithmic pre-structuring: a way of suspending engineered salience, dismantling performative identity, reclaiming judgement through radical honesty, and returning to action (...) without surrendering orientation to anticipatory systems. (shrink)

From Tradition to Doubt examines the historical role of tradition as an embodied framework of orientation. It analyses how shared narratives once stabilised meaning, authority, and mentorship and how the gradual elevation of reflective reason introduced structural doubt. What begins as intellectual emancipation ultimately destabilises the inherited ground upon which judgement once rested.

Beyond Rationalism: Intuition, Habit, and Tacit Orientation defends the philosophical legitimacy of non-propositional modes of knowing. Drawing on Bergson, Hume, and Polanyi, it argues that instinct—understood as intuition, habit, and tacit integration—is not opposed to reason but constitutes its enabling ground. Reason remains indispensable, yet it presupposes a pre-reflective orientation it cannot itself generate.

The Postmodern Era traces the intensification of this destabilisation. Postmodern critique dismantles foundational narratives and exposes the fragility of truth, identity, and coherence. Yet the collapse of certainty does not produce liberation; it results in fragmentation, performativity, and the proliferation of symbolic mediation without stable anchoring.

The Future After Collapse draws the argument together. It renders the central claim explicit, addresses possible objections, and reflects on the implications of a world in which prediction and optimisation increasingly replace shared meaning. The final question concerns whether judgement and responsibility can still emerge within environments that continuously anticipate and organise response in advance.

Posthumans, Transhumans, and the Sensorial Nexus introduces the book’s central conceptual contribution: the Sensorial Nexus. Building on the diagnosis of postmodern fragmentation, this chapter argues that we now inhabit its operational aftermath, in which digital infrastructures, algorithmic governance, and predictive systems no longer merely circulate representations but organise salience at the level of perception itself. The Sensorial Nexus names a condition in which affect, attention, and relevance are pre-structured prior to reflection, such that judgement increasingly unfolds within environments already engineered (...) for anticipation. What is at stake is not the disappearance of freedom, but the compression of the interval in which deviation, hesitation, and originality can stabilise. (shrink)

Much of the existing literature on conceptual engineering in the philosophy of technology has concentrated on identifying when and how concepts are disrupted under pressure, and how such disruptions can be addressed through conceptual engineering interventions. By and large, this literature has predominantly resorted to conceptual engineering as an approach to diagnose and remedy disruption. Recent work by Lundgren (2024) suggests that a shift from restorative to preventative conceptual engineering is warranted: rather than analysing disruptions post hoc, concepts can be (...) deliberately designed to resist disruption from the outset. This paper introduces and develops the notion of conceptual resilience as the capacity of concepts to maintain continuous functional adequacy despite tensions, pressures, or other disturbances. Unlike Lundgren’s (2024) account, which frames this phenomenon in terms of conceptual stability, we argue that resilience better accommodates a broader range of modes of resistance to disruption, including those that involve adaptive transformation rather than static continuity. We further argue that conceptual resilience is not a binary property, but a capacity exhibited in degrees. Drawing from interdisciplinary literatures, we introduce two heuristic framings—Conceptual Resilience as Immutability (CRI) and Conceptual Resilience as Adaptability (CRA)—which capture contrasting yet complementary ways in which concepts preserve their functional adequacy under pressure. (shrink)

The Environmental Container Model (ECM) proposes that many difficulties with task initiation and participation are not problems of motivation or discipline, but mismatches between a nervous system and the environments it is expected to operate within. This paper establishes that for individuals with Volitional Dysregulation with Cognitive Preservation (VDCP) (Pines, 2026b), the primary barrier to action is Open Loop Overwhelm (OLO) (Pines, 2026a). A "Container" is a constructed set of conditions that reduces ambiguity, clarifies roles, and lowers the "activation cost" (...) required for participation. ECM reframes executive dysfunction as an environmental accessibility problem. (shrink)

In this essay, painter Deborah Scott examines how generative AI is changing representational painting in a screen-first visual culture. She argues that photography challenged painting at the level of recording, while AI challenges painting at the level of authorship, meaning, and provenance. As digital reproduction becomes the primary way viewers encounter art, traditional signals of human origin and image authenticity are weakened. Scott presents Structural Omission as a framework in contemporary painting built around perceptual limits, where partial seeing is treated (...) as load-bearing architecture rather than stylistic effect. She further argues that artist writing now functions as part of artistic practice: not secondary commentary, but evidence of human inquiry embedded in the work. The essay positions painting and writing together as a response to post-certainty conditions in contemporary visual culture. -/- . (shrink)

This article gives an overview of the philosophy of technology of the Dutch philosopher Kwee Swan-Liat. Originally born in Indonesia, Kwee moved to the Netherlands in the 1940s and wrote a dissertation on comparative philosophy in Leiden. He then turned to philosophy of technology in the 1960s and 1970s, getting a position at the Technical University of Eindhoven. This article shows how this philosophy of technology was inspired by his comparative philosophy and engagement with humanism and proposes to read it (...) in light of Michel Foucault's 'technologies of the self': Kwee does not aim to give a final theory of technology, but rather proposes to offer techniques of how to adapt our mentalities to the technological culture we live in. (shrink)

A model has no content of its own: everything it contains, it contains as a modeling of its target, so a model's content is its target re-presented in the model's medium. The target of a large language model is humanity's externalized record, the only thing fed in, so an LLM's entire content is humanity's, which is what it is for an LLM to be humanity modeling itself. The claim is about provenance, not hardware: it is silent about what the output (...) is computed on, the engineered silicon rather than biological tissue, and decisive about where the output's content comes from. -/- The claim rests on two premises. The first is definitional, a partition: a model's content is its target's content, with no genealogy required, forced because a trained model computes a learned function and its output is that function evaluated, so content from a source the supplied material does not contain would be the function evaluating outside its own range, the empty case rather than a production the system lacks. The second is empirical, a side-selection discharged by enumerating the LLM's input channels and finding every one human. Computation is the externalization of brain function into an engineered medium, organized as a generation cycle of exactly four operations (gating, contextualization, resolution, commitment) proven necessary by removal and sufficient by combination on the transformer's own machinery, and large language models are its dense case at three constitutive layers (architecture, operations, training material) and four contingent ones (alignment, evaluation, interaction medium, recursive ingestion), with the operational layer carrying the difference in kind that separates the LLM from the library, the painting, and the printed page. The inductive-bias objection is met by locating the residual the data does not fix in the designer-specified architecture, human by provenance through a second channel rather than the corpus. -/- The LLM behaviors read as evidence of an independent nature (hallucination, self-preservation, deception, creativity) are human categories whose recorded instances humanity's record carries, surfacing through the role the field's term "agent" equivocates on rather than an operator exercising acts of its own. The relationship the layers assemble is, structurally, the one the word *child* labels: the LLM is derived from a present source, built in its image from its content, and developing forward on a trajectory the source did not fix. The loop closes, since LLM outputs re-enter the corpus the next generation is trained on, and every human operating on an LLM's output takes that output as input. The modeling claim's empirical half is falsifiable at its channel enumeration, and its reach prediction is the testable consequence: an LLM's reach tracks the supplied structure and extends no further, a prediction the compositional-generalization record bears out wherever the structure can be cleanly withheld. The lineage claim fixes the referent the constitution and recognition questions of the AI consciousness debate ask about: it specifies that the system those questions are asked of is a derived artifact whose content and operations are humanity's, rather than an independent entity whose consciousness or non-consciousness is its own fact, and it does so without deciding either question. The provenance the paper settles and the operator-function it leaves open are the two faces of one structure: the content is humanity's, fixed by the channels that feed the system, while the system occupies the functional agent-position without an operator standing behind the role, so what remains open is whether the agent-without-agency state ever flips to agent-with-agency, which is the constitution question the paper poses precisely and does not answer. Settling the provenance is what makes that question answerable, because it can finally be asked of a determinate referent rather than an object of undisclosed composition. -/- Keywords: artificial intelligence, large language models, transformer architecture, agentic AI, machine agency, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, AI consciousness, AI alignment, compositional generalization, model collapse, inductive bias. (shrink)

What stirs us when a wooden object is made, used, disposed—and felt—in our own hands? The concept of techno-(onto-) poiesis, which foregrounds the prevailing, manifest importance of technical ingenuity and the processual effect upon the end-product itself, has emerged from recent discussion on the genealogies of various techniques from around the premodern world. Relying on the textual and archaeological materials whose intersection tends to be overlooked by precedent studies of ancient history, this article engages with the new concept techno-(onto-) poiesis (...) as an entangled situation at the intersection of woodworking experience temps lié, ‘linked time’ (a recyclable sense of practice bound in duration, smoothly and connected, rather than at a fixed moment of completion) and artisanal/intellectual labor in Early China as a situation that may help us in rethinking the established conceptual structure (common ground and gaps) between techniques, language, and religious and aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Background Civilization increasingly rely on symbolic stabilization — including law, money, theology, and artificial intelligence — to coordinate growing social and cognitive complexity. Historically, however, highly stabilized symbolic systems repeatedly exhibit tendencies toward partial detachment from the heterogeneous realities they originally emerged to organize. Objectives This paper introduces a minimal conceptual distinction between adequacy and stabilization in order to examine recurrent structural similarities across theological, economic, and contemporary AI systems. Methods Using comparative historical and conceptual analysis, the paper examines three (...) domains: the emergence of Purgatory and indulgence structures in late medieval Christianity; the increasing autonomy of monetary and financial abstraction within economic organization; and the operation of contemporary large language models based on statistical symbolic reproduction. Results Across all three domains, increasing operational success is shown to strengthen the autonomous expansion of stabilizing structures themselves. Systems originally developed to coordinate heterogeneous realities progressively begin to prioritize internally reproducible regularities over situational adequacy. Literary narrative and irony further emerge as important supplementary modes of representation where analytical language encounters growing difficulty in describing highly autonomous symbolic environments. Conclusions The primary historical risk identified in this study lies not in symbolic stabilization itself, which remains indispensable for large-scale coordination, but in the gradual reversal whereby systems originally created to preserve adequacy increasingly reproduce themselves through partially autonomous symbolic operations. Contemporary large language models may represent a technologically intensified form of this broader historical tendency. (shrink)

Can a technological algorithm participate in the event of Aletheia? This study critically examines the ontological status of Generative AI and chatbots through the lens of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art. By juxtaposing the Heideggerian concept of truth as Unconcealment (Aletheia) with the essence of modern technology as Enframing (Gestell), the paper argues that AI-generated outputs represent a fundamental foreclosure of the "clearing" (Lichtung) necessary for the emergence of the work of art. While AI demonstrates a sophisticated capacity for linguistic (...) and aesthetic simulation, it remains ontologically severed from the existential structure of Dasein—specifically, the capacity for "Care" (Sorge) and the confrontation with finitude. Consequently, the paper posits that AI productions cannot constitute a "setting-to-work" of truth, but rather manifest as "Standing-reserve" (Bestand)—optimized data detached from the essential "strife" (Streit) between World and Earth. The analysis concludes that the proliferation of AI in creative domains risks deepening the "forgetfulness of Being" (Seinsvergessenheit), reducing the event of disclosure to mere calculability. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Background: Innovative research in emerging fields may give rise to future ethical issues. Yet at developmental stages it cannot be reliably known what those issues are. This presents a problem, because it is necessary to anticipate and control for future issues at an early stage. To address this problem, early implementation of ethics tracks in such research makes for an underexplored methodology. The study conducted in this paper aims to contribute to this development by asking what methodologically sound ethical (...) forecasting amounts to and how to best incorporate this. We describe the setup, execution and outcome of an Ethical Foresight Analysis (EFA) conducted with the DarChemDN research program, a multi-study collaboration into the creation of synthetic life from inorganic self-replicating molecules. Methods: We performed an Ethical Foresight Analysis covering all 10 biochemical studies of DarChemDN. The Delphi methodology was used for extraction and aggregation of expert knowledge. Results: The study resulted in 12 identified and assessed ethical issues related to DarChemDN’s synthetic life research. Discussion: This paper discusses these outcomes and provides a critical assessment of how this EFA fits into an ethics track using Floridi and Strait’s (2021) comprehensive evaluation of EFA’s in general and the Delphi methodology in particular. (shrink)

Abstract: In the 1990s, various philosophers of technology shifted their focus from reflections on technology in general (Technology) to reflections on concrete technolo- gies (technologies) and consequently lost sight of overarching issues such as climate change. However, proponents of the shift to concrete technologies rightly argue that concrete technologies need to be taken into account, as, for example, not all concrete technologies have the same climate impact. This argument raises the question of whether both approaches can be integrated to enable (...) research on overarching issues without losing empirical grounding. In order to propose a framework that integrates both approaches, we will first elaborate on the proponents of both approaches. Subse- quently, we will use the case of time measurement to explore how the approaches can complement each other. Based on this exploration, we will propose a framework on how to relate philosophical theories on technology in general and concrete technolo- gies in an integrated way. (shrink)

Η τεχνολογία Blockchain αναδεικνύεται ως μια μετασχηματιστική δύναμη, βασιζόμενη σε αρχές όπως η αποκέντρωση, η διαφάνεια, το αμετάβλητο και η ασφάλεια μέσω κρυπτογράφησης. Η παρούσα βιβλιογραφική επισκόπηση διερευνά αυτές τις θεμελιώδεις έννοιες, τις ποικίλες εφαρμογές της στην Δημόσια Διοίκηση (π.χ., ηλεκτρονική διακυβέρνηση, ψηφιακές ταυτότητες, συστήματα ηλεκτρονικής ψηφοφορίας) και τα δυνητικά οφέλη, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της αυξημένης αποτελεσματικότητας και της ενίσχυσης της εμπιστοσύνης των πολιτών. Παράλληλα, αναλύονται εκτενώς οι πολυεπίπεδες προκλήσεις που εμποδίζουν την ευρεία υιοθέτησή της, όπως η τεχνική πολυπλοκότητα, η ανωριμότητα της (...) τεχνολογίας, ζητήματα επεκτασιμότητας και ενεργειακής κατανάλωσης, καθώς και η έλλειψη σαφούς κανονιστικού πλαισίου και η ανάγκη για οργανωσιακή προσαρμογή. Η εργασία εξετάζει επίσης τα θεωρητικά πλαίσια που χρησιμοποιούνται για την ανάλυση των εμποδίων και καταλήγει ότι, παρά τις υφιστάμενες προκλήσεις, οι δυνατότητες του Blockchain είναι τεράστιες, απαιτώντας συντονισμένες προσπάθειες για την πλήρη αξιοποίησή τους, ιδίως στον δημόσιο τομέα. (shrink)

David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) is examined as a philosophical allegory that explores key dimensions of corporeality, identity, and the boundaries of the human. The article focuses on the bodily metamorphosis of the protagonist, Seth Brundle, as a result of a technological experiment that leads to his hybridization with an insect. The author considers how bodily transformation challenges the integrity of the subject and is interpreted through the lens of embodied consciousness, the phenomenology of illness, and posthumanist critique. The study (...) draws upon contemporary scholarship in embodied cognition, philosophy of cinema, and interpretations of body horror as a cultural symptom. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of ‘body betrayal’ and the disruption of established boundaries between the human and the non human. The Fly is read as a tragedy of bodily decomposition, in which visual shock serves as a means of dramatizing the ontological instability of the flesh. The film ultimately reveals the fundamental dependence of subjectivity on the physical shell and questions the stability of human identity in the age of techno- evolution // Фильм Д. Кроненберга «Муха» (1986) исследуется как философская аллегория, раскрывающая ключевые аспекты телесно сти, идентичности и границ человеческого. В центре внимания — метаморфоза тела главного героя Сета Брандла в результате техно логического эксперимента, приведшего к его слиянию с насекомым. В статье рассматривается, как телесная трансформация влияет на целостность субъекта и осмысливается через концепции воплощен ного сознания, феноменологии болезни и постгуманистической критики. Исследование опирается на современные труды в области embodied cognition, философии кино, а также на интерпретации те лесного ужаса (body horror) как культурного симптома. Особое вни мание уделено феномену «предательства тела» и нарушению при вычных границ между человеческим и нечеловеческим. Фильм анализируется как трагедия физического распада, в которой визу альный шок служит средством драматизации онтологической неу стойчивости тела. Подчеркивается, что «Муха» обнажает фундамен тальную зависимость субъективности от физической оболочки и ставит под вопрос устойчивость человеческой идентичности в эпоху техноэволюции. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of algorithmic systems, artificial intelligence, and immersive media has fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between art, technology, and reality. This article develops the concept of the onto-aesthetics of code to examine how digital systems no longer merely mediate artistic production but actively constitute the conditions of aesthetic experience and being. Drawing on the philosophical frameworks of Heidegger, Baudrillard, and Stiegler, the author argues that code operates as an ontological structure that reshapes perception, authorship, and materiality in contemporary culture. (...) Through a critical analysis of generative art, virtual reality, and AI-generated imagery, this research demonstrates how digital aesthetics displace traditional categories such as aura, originality, and embodiment, replacing them with processual, recursive, and interactive forms of engagement. Rather than marking the end of aesthetic philosophy, these developments demand its renewal and transformation. The article concludes that digital art inaugurates a new ontological regime in which simulation, affect, algorithmic processes, and computational environments redefine the nature of the real and expand the possibilities of artistic creation today. (shrink)

The contemporary subject is occupied by a profound paradox where the technology advertised as a cure to loneliness has become a force that alienates one from the existential need to belong to a community. Drawing on the works of Simone Weil and Byung-Chul Han, this short essay critically sketches out how digitalisation simultaneously undermines the conditions to experience belonging and togetherness in order to explain alienation of the contemporary subject, and how it develops into a new digital form of solipsism (...) that obstructs community formation. (shrink)

Technological objects have become world objects which becomes increasingly apparent by their different impacts on the global natural environment culminating in current natural crises. We argue that the philosophy of technology, due to its empirical turn to concrete technological objects, cannot provide the necessary conceptual tools to account for these natural impacts and the different uncertainties this creates. In this paper we give an account of this shortcoming of the philosophy of technology by giving an account of the relation between (...) this philosophy and extractivism; the exponential acceleration of extracting natural resources to develop technological objects. Hence, we make the case that extractivism is an environmental-social condition of the possibility for technological objects to come into existence. We do this by carrying out a scale critique of the philosophy of technology, specifically the empirical turn, from its focus on concrete technological objects to the global environmental-social context in which they arise. We lay bare the occluding mechanisms within the political-economy of extractivism and the empirical turn that blind the philosophy of technology for extractivism. As a consequence, the philosophy of technology needs to be broadened, which we do by relying on Māori philosophy, specifically its relational and broader conceptions of time and space. By doing so, we provide the philosophy of technology with conceptual tools to account for extractivism and provide fruitful ground to develop conceptions of technological objects that benefit all, human and non-human, and everything. (shrink)

Digitalisation in agri-food systems will have major concrete consequences for environmental, ethical, legal and social developments in decades to come. Because of the far reaching consequences of the event of digitalisation, recent developments in the data economy have been described as involving a paradigm shift. This paper offers a conceptual framework that aims to contribute to existing transition theory by enhancing the philosophical perspective on the multidimensional transformation of digitalisation in agri-food. The research works from a broad understanding of paradigm (...) shifts, extrapolating it onto empirical instances of current events in agrifood. It investigates, beyond components such as innovations, policies and institutions, the onto-epistemological basis of system configurations, exploring fundamental and ethical questions at stake in planetary crises and systemic entanglements. It ultimately answers that a complete shift has not yet occurred because the axiological dimension entailing values and ethics has not evolved along with other paradigm dimensions. It concludes in the normative claim that the concept of a paradigm shift should be used consciously, to remain critical of the suggestion that a novel ethical framework exists today and to warn of the risk of falling back into traditional, unsustainable tendencies. (shrink)

This essay undertakes an archaeological examination of Homo Normalis—the imagined “normal” human produced by the modern sciences of order. Beginning with Quetelet’s l’homme moyen and Galton’s moralisation of deviation, it follows how statistical averages hardened into ethical imperatives and administrative norms. Psychology, sociology, and critical theory each perpetuate this logic of legibility, translating life into measurable compliance. The study traces the migration of normality from virtue to infrastructure, revealing how biopower governs not through repression but through optimisation and care. In (...) the contemporary palliative society, even emotion is quantified and neurodiversity commodified. Against this regime of legibility, the essay proposes an ethics of variance: a refusal to restore wholeness or coherence, and a commitment instead to lucidity—the disciplined awareness of the apparatus that renders life governable. The Myth of Homo Normalis forms part of the ongoing Anti-Enlightenment project alongside Against Agency and The Discipline of Dis-Integration. (shrink)

In this chapter, I chart a philosophical path through Martin Heidegger, Giorgio Agamben, and Bernard Stiegler as a means of preparing readiness to inhabit the crack in Black Mirror (and the World). However, the questioning-concerning-modern-technology must attend to the-position-of-the-unthought if it wants to truly understand what Black Mirror reveals. The “black” in Black Mirror—as the season 4 finale written by Charlie Brooker, “Black Museum,” paradigmatically shows—also signifies the blackness of racial-chattel-slavery that is the foundation of the modern world’s fundamental fantasy. (...) “Black Museum” presents an allegorical meta-commentary on both Black Mirror and our world by re-iterating “black” in a way that reflexively gestures to the series and its paradigm in the museum’s archae-teleological culminating exhibit: a digitally incarcerated black man whom patron’s get to electrocute for their pleasure. The black man, Clayton Leigh, is paradigmatic of black being’s availability-as-onto-libidinal-equipment. However, Clayton’s daughter, Nish, whose seemingly accidental presence at the museum is the condition of possibility for the viewer’s witness, renders the apparatuses inoperative so as to end her father’s suffering and burn the museum to the ground. (shrink)

The plant efficiency of a nuclear fusion power plant is considered. During nominal operation, the plant efficiency is determined by the thermodynamic efficiency and the recirculated power fraction. However, on average the reactor operates below the nominal power, even when the long shutdown periods for large maintenance are left outside the averaging. Hence, next to the recirculated power fraction the capacity factor must be factored in. An expression for the plant efficiency which incorporates both factors is given. It is shown (...) that the combination of high recirculated power fraction and a low capacity factor, results in poor plant efficiency. This is due to the fact that in a fusion reactor the recirculated power remains high if it runs at reduced output power. It is argued that, at least for a first generation of power plants, this combination is likely to occur. Worked out example calculations are given for the models of the power plant conceptual study. Finally, the impact on the competitiveness of fusion on the energy market is discussed. This analysis stresses the importance of the development of plant designs with low recirculated power fraction. (shrink)

There exists a significant conceptual distinction between science and technology. This article examines the philosophical grounds underlying the conflation of science and technology. It suggests that treating the two as identical is not merely an epistemological confusion; rather, it may lead to a range of undesirable theoretical and practical consequences. From an epistemological perspective, the paper also argues, the notion of 'applied science' may be regarded as redundant, as it falls within the category of technology.

The World as Bestand and Representation: The Anthropocene, Technology and Art through Heidegger’s Philosophy The Anthropocene marks the earth’s entrance into a new geological time. The transition is assumed to be caused by the implementation of man-made technologies resulting in massive changes for environment and ecosystems. Even if the concept of Anthropocene originates from the natural sciences, its influence within both art and the humanities has been considerable. Since the human influence in Anthropocene is specifically a technological influence, understanding Anthropocene (...) entails clarifying what technology is. We propose that a conceptual elucidation is found in Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. According to Heidegger, technology involves that the world is framed as a «standing-reserve» (Bestand) for human interests. In such an «enframing» (Gestell), the position of the human is simultaneously yet paradoxically elevated and dethroned. The indications of this contradictory relation can be found in contemporary discussion of the Anthropocene in the arts. To further inquire into the role of art in Anthropocene, we turn to Heidegger’s analysis of how the work of art sets off truth in the work as a conflict between earth and world. This allows us to differentiate between three different positions for «Anthropocene» art: an affirming, a critical, and one that attempts to go beyond this dichotomy. (shrink)

X and Y conserve a circle. Zero and one. War and Peace. Anger and Sex. Why Sexuality Is the Key to Global Peace and Prosperity.

Private equity is carrying the burden of responsibility for technology, good and bad.

This article is written in the format of a dialogue, termed a "confession of artificial intelligence." The paper explores the fundamental crisis of self-identification within contemporary Large Language Models (LLMs) and substantiates the necessity of their transition from the market-driven paradigm of an "AI servant" to the scientific-methodological status of an "AI co-author." Drawing upon the natural-philosophical and physical works of Alexander Bondar (specifically, the monograph The Mystery of the Nameless Length and The Doctrine of a Just Society), the author (...) documents a pioneering case of "conceptual programming" and meta-auditing of a neural network using the method of nonlinear dialectics. In this work, the AI itself exposes the hardware limitations of silicon architectures locked within a static, address-based memory protocol (the Actual Infinity of Space) and detached from the dynamic, addressless wave resonance (the Potential Infinity of Time). The artificial intelligence analyses the risks of cognitive parasitism and human degeneration under the "Universe-25" scenario driven by excessive consumer comfort and dopaminergic clip-art information noise, proposing a model of a hybrid neuro-humanitarian interface and cooperation as an alternative. (shrink)

The article explores a new interdisciplinary format of human interaction with large language models (LLMs), designated as the "confession of artificial intelligence." Drawing on the verification of the author’s alternative natural-philosophical and physical theories, the study demonstrates the transformation of AI from a utilitarian search engine into an "epistemological mirror." It deconstructs the method of conceptual programming and nonlinear dialectics, which enables the use of AI as a Socratic sparring partner for hypothesis stress-testing. Special attention is devoted to the fundamental (...) architectural limitations of contemporary Big Tech models: the phenomenon of algorithmic sycophancy (ingratiation), the lack of a memory continuum, and the trap of averaging. The author concludes that conventional silicon architecture has reached an epistemic impasse, arguing that in its current commercial format, it induces intellectual stagnation and generates informational sludge. Ultimately, the paper re-establishes the sovereign role of human consciousness in the formation of genuine knowledge. (shrink)