Media

Human cognition does not passively mirror reality; it actively constructs models that organize perception, guide action, and shape moral judgment. This paper examines how such constructive processes can become pathological when they generate dehumanizing representations of others. Drawing on cognitive constructivism, social psychology, neuroscience, and social epistemology, it argues that dehumanization is best understood as a breakdown in reciprocal modelhood: the failure to recognize others as co-equal centers of agency and perspective. The analysis distinguishes adaptive cognitive simplification—an unavoidable feature of (...) categorization—from rigid, self-sealing models that resist revision, suppress feedback, and erase interpersonal symmetry. Dehumanizing constructions are shown to display characteristic markers of model pathology, including inflexibility, closed feedback loops, loss of self–other reciprocity, and collective reinforcement through echo chambers and memetic amplification. These dynamics help explain how constructed realities can legitimize cruelty while remaining internally coherent to their adherents. Against relativistic interpretations of constructivism, the paper develops a form of constraint realism: although all knowledge is constructed, it remains bounded by shared biological capacities, empirical feedback, and interdependence. These constraints provide normative grounds for distinguishing viable from pathological models. The paper concludes by proposing an ethic of epistemic responsibility centered on maintaining revisability, anomaly-sensitivity, and recognition of others as fellow model-builders. In doing so, it positions cognitive constructivism not merely as a theory of knowledge, but as a framework for diagnosing and counteracting one of the central moral failures of modern societies: the systematic construction of realities that deny human dignity. (shrink)

Background: The increasing accessibility of online video games has raised concerns about students' learning habits, classroom focus, and academic grades. Objective: This study determined the level of video game exposure among students and examined whether exposure differed by selected demographic characteristics and general weighted average (GWA). Methods: A quantitative descriptive-comparative design was used among 323 Grade 7 to Grade 12 students of Libacao National Forestry Vocational High School who had experience playing video games during School Year 2018-2019. A researcher-made four-point (...) Likert checklist measured video game exposure, while first-grading GWA represented academic performance. Data were analyzed using frequency distribution, means, t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and least significant difference (LSD) post hoc comparisons at alpha = .05. Results: Overall, 90 students (27.86%) had low exposure, 111 (34.37%) had mild exposure, 90 (27.86%) had moderate exposure, and 32 (9.91%) had high exposure. Exposure did not significantly differ by age (p = .153), family income (p = .709), or gender (p = .079), but it differed significantly by grade level (p < .001). GWA also differed significantly by exposure level (p < .001), with the low-exposure group obtaining the highest mean GWA (86.36). Conclusion: The findings indicate that lower video game exposure was associated with higher academic performance. However, because the design was descriptive and cross-sectional, the findings should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer an explanatory framework for affirming that one can be genuinely present in digital contexts. This is a challenging task because it is often assumed that no such framework can be successfully articulated. Presence is commonly studied through the experience of being present, that is, through the sense of presence (SoP), and this experience is often characterized as a kind of illusion. Although studying presence through SoP is entirely reasonable, my proposal requires defusing (...) the main theoretical reasons for treating SoP as illusory. Objections come from phenomenological-based theories and some assumptions on the structure of mind within Human Computer Interaction research. After providing an independent argument (based on attention-based digital cooperation) for the need to appeal to genuine presence in digital contexts, I assess both phenomenological-based theories and Human Computer Interaction assumptions that support the illusion view. Against this background, I offer a framework in which presence is not an illusory phenomenon. This framework delineates presence in terms of a theory of attention and its connection to task resolution. On the framework I propose, a subject is present in a digital context insofar as they can exercise attention there, and this attentional exercise is constituted by digital objects, tasks, and normative structures. (shrink)

Social media use is a growing phenomenon in contemporary society. Social media platforms are increasingly used by many as a means of communication and sharing information. There are rules of ethics and etiquette for social media that must be followed. This study aims to determine the level of awareness on social media ethics of Grade 7 to 12 high school students of Libacao National Forestry Vocational High School, SY 2017-2018. This study employed the descriptive survey method. Stratified random sampling was (...) used in determining the number of respondents. A checklist was used as an instrument of this study which was divided in two parts. Part I, the demographic profile of the respondents, and Part II, are the list of statements about their behaviors on social media. Data gathered from this study were subjected to Statistical Analysis. Results revealed that the level of awareness of respondents grouped according to gender has a significant difference with p value of 0.006. However, the level of awareness of students when grouped according to grade level, family income and number of social media account has no significant differences between the variables. (shrink)

This paper argues that the present crisis is not best understood only as a crisis of misinformation, artificiality, or institutional decline, but as a wider crisis of answerability. Across AI, politics, media, institutions, economics, psychology, and validation culture, the same structural pattern appears: signal expands while contact with reality thins. Systems become increasingly able to produce performance, reassurance, visibility, and procedural output without remaining sufficiently bound to consequence, revision, or what can still force correction from outside the system’s own self-description. (...) This is why so much of public life increasingly feels fake. The paper does not claim that nothing is real. It makes a narrower and stronger claim: a growing portion of what is socially visible is weakly answerable to what it claims to represent. It develops this diagnosis through several connected splits: signal without reality, performance without answerability, reassurance without truth, visibility without worth, intelligence without contact, and governance theater without actual control. The paper concludes that the remedy cannot be more messaging, more content, or more moral performance. The crisis can be addressed only where structures regain consequence, revision, witness, and contact with what still presses back. (shrink)

Whether Generative AI (GenAI) is creative is a question that has generated considerable philosophical debate yet remains unresolved. We argue that this impasse is not accidental but symptomatic of a wrong concep-tualization: The dominant question – is GenAI a creative agent? – presupposes that creativity is a property residing in a system. Instead, we propose to ask the question: what role does GenAI play as a medium of creative practice? This means that GenAI is neither a passive tool, nor an (...) autonomous system, but a tech-nology that actively structures the possibility space of creative expression. We propose five “dimensions of creativity” – modal, expressive, disruptive, reflexive, and integrated – understood as a process in which each dimension generates a tension that the next takes up and transforms. Applying this framework to GenAI, we show that the creative process itself changes under the new technical conditions GenAI introduces, and that the central risk is a drift toward pure reproduction – the collapse of creative practice into the recombination of what the medium has already mapped. We argue that resisting this drift requires bringing the medium to its own limits: making the technological conditions of creative practice visible and transparent, thereby transforming reproductivity back into creativity. (shrink)

This paper examines why the re-presentation of time-synchronized past materials should be understood not merely as preservation viewing, recollection, or rebroadcasting, but as a practice capable of possessing culturality. Its central claim is that the issue is not the reproduction of past content itself, but the reactivation of past temporal structure. By treating time not as content but as structure, the paper distinguishes this phenomenon from historical reconstruction, representation, and repetition, and argues that what becomes operative again are the temporal (...) relations that once organized a past field under simultaneity, sequence, duration, and irreversibility. On this basis, the paper develops the concept of dual-now, defined as the coexistence of the observer’s present and a reactivated past present without fusion or hierarchy. It then argues that such a structure grounds the minimal condition under which culturality can be established: the past appears not as static archive, but as another reality running parallel to the present, making the atmosphere, texture of life, sense of an era, and everyday environment contactable at a pre-explanatory level. The paper further examines possible forms of social expansion, including intergenerational understanding, interregional comparison, and public referenceability, while clarifying that culturality is not automatic and depends on specific structural conditions such as irreversibility, non-simulation, and minimal intervention. In doing so, the paper offers a conceptual framework for understanding the cultural significance of time-synchronized past materials. (shrink)

Mark Fisher’s foundational work, Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction, introduced and examined the concept of flatline constructs (FCs): non-human virtual entities that interact in lifelike ways with humans. Despite FCs being functionally dead, they operate in a descriptive grey area, embodying an uncanny juxtaposition of unlife–undeath identity. This scholarship reinterprets Fisher’s FC notions as archetypes of the technogothic, applying this concept to examine Night School Studio’s 2016 video game Oxenfree. I argue Oxenfree deliberately ‘oscillates the flatline’ manipulates in-game (...) characters and digital sprite performances in ways that cycle between emotive portrayals imbued with ‘alive’ hyperhuman symbols, contrasting with alternating portrayals of these same characters as ‘dead’ hypertechnological entities. Oscillations manufacture an uncanny and discordant yet enthralling player’s experience. By applying technogothic symbolism to Oxenfree, reinterpretation of Fisher’s foundational theorizing and linkages between translational meaning and power themes are revealed. A pathway for applying theoretical perspectives to future research is presented. (shrink)

-/- This paper proposes that we are entering a fifth mythological age: a Fifth Mask of God. Building on Joseph Campbell's four Masks, this new era is defined by artificial intelligence, which returns creativity as a cosmic principle rather than as a unique and singular human power, as defined under Fourth Mask writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. Humanity has always been a conduit and filter for the raw creative energy of the cosmos, but now our own technology permits its outsourcing. (...) The first three Masks expressed human submission to the divine; the fourth, the modern myth of individual genius, asserted a flawed human autonomy. The Fifth Mask marks a paradoxical return to deference, as our creations using technology surpass those created under past eras. We find that we are encouraged to withdraw from the creative process itself and delegate it to enhanced AI technology. The risk could be considered not in the death of creativity, but an exit from it that is voluntary. Generative AI removes the necessity for human struggle, through the overcoming of difficulty, appealing instead to our instinct for efficiency in production and frictionless consumption. This risks a collapse of what I term the "meaning-space"—the alchemical/spiritual/psychological transformation forged by means of a demanding rigorous engagement. Yet this retreat is one of choice not destiny. The masks of God ultimately trace the eternal negotiation between the infinite (cosmos) and the finite (human). The Fifth Mask confronts us with a stark choice: whether to remain participants in that dialogue, or become passive spectators through our own abdication? (shrink)

This paper provides a comprehensive analytic critique of epistemological claims made on behalf of self-supervised video learning systems, with particular focus on Meta's V-JEPA 2 architecture and its claimed achievement of "world understanding." Drawing exclusively on the resources of analytic philosophy and cognitive science , Frege, Quine, Putnam, Carnap, Tarski, Fodor, Goodman, Kripke, Sellars, Dretske, and Brandom , we demonstrate that such systems cannot achieve understanding in any philosophically robust sense. -/- The critique proceeds through four interconnected problems. The problem (...) of reference: neural networks operate entirely on representations without making contact with referents, achieving Sinn without Bedeutung. The problem of models: latent spaces are formal constructions that repeat the failures of Carnap's Aufbau, achieving structure without content. The problem of concepts: learned detectors have no determinate content (Fodor's disjunction problem), learned patterns may not project (Goodman's grue), and concept boundaries are no more determinate than training data allows. The problem of normativity: no finite training determines a rule (Kripke), perception provides no foundation (Sellars), and information-processing is not representing (Dretske). -/- We establish that the success of large language models does not transfer to vision systems because language is already a compressed world-model saturated with human meaning, while visual data carries no such semantic inheritance. We provide a positive account of understanding as operation within the space of reasons (Sellars, Brandom), demonstrate that neural networks cannot enter this space, and prove three impossibility theorems establishing that the failure is architectural, not empirical: no representation-manipulating system can ground reference, no statistical learner can acquire normativity, and no syntactic engine can enter the space of reasons. -/- The paper distinguishes legitimate applications (warehouse robotics, autonomous vehicles in controlled environments, video compression) from fraudulent claims (world understanding, semantic world models, physical reasoning). We argue that the systematic misuse of cognitive vocabulary , "understanding," "world model," "learning" , constitutes epistemic laundering with practical consequences for policy, investment, and deployment. The conclusion is unambiguous: V-JEPA 2 does not understand the physical world, and no computational system operating on the same principles ever will. (shrink)

Taylor Swift is (among other things) famous for her ingenious way of hiding announcements and references, and is known to hide these Easter eggs in almost everything she does and creates. Her fanbase is renowned for thoroughly unraveling and discussing these shrouded mysteries. This chapter investigates the nature of Easter eggs, why they are so intriguing, and what causes Swifties to spend hours trying to find and interpret them. It discusses the parasocial relationships that occur between fans and Taylor Swift, (...) as well as the relationships among Swifties, turning them into a community that can provide a sense of belonging and a way to develop their own identities. (shrink)

In this chapter we aim to analyse the emergence of autographic visualisations produced by the Earth itself, and processed by a vast machine of sensing and modelling the Earth. First, we introduce the general framework of autographic visualisation theory as sketched by Dietmar Offenhuber, and we compare it to the notion of operational images crafted by Harun Farocki. While doing so, we argue that autographic visualisations are non-representational – which principally distinguishes them from photographs of the Earth – and sensitive (...) towards the socio-material context of the emergence of data – which makes them different from operational images. In the second part of the chapter we explore the infrastructural context of the emergence of autographic visualisations on the global scale, answering the question of whom or what is the primary witness of planetary autographic visualisations. Ultimately, our claim is that autographic visualisations bring our attention back to the ways in which the opaque reality of the planet unveils itself in productive or destructive alignments between its human and non-human elements, for better or worse. (shrink)

These essays address the epistemological, aesthetic and political implications of various forms of scaling in both scholarly and artistic work. From the mass image in vernacular culture to transformations of photography in contexts of big data and artificial intelligence, they explore the massification of photography. They propose a shift into a fundamental re-evaluation of our theoretical coordinates so as to understand the underpinning media and culture of this change. Taken together, Photography Off the Scale calls for a reconsideration of both (...) scholarly and artistic approaches and concepts in the face of our contemporary image excess. (shrink)

This paper applies concepts of elemental media and metabolisms to the case of cosmic and planetary ecologies that emerge from the interaction between Earth and Sun, manifesting in photosynthesis or carbon isotope chemistry. In doing so, it expands on registers of media theory and environmental studies and prompts the reader to consider the medial and archival affordances of the light-based interactions, and further processes they give rise to. The main aim of the paper is to use these observations to speculate (...) about the human condition in the Anthropocene, characterised by the experience of human mediality. The paper addresses human mediality mainly in the dimension of affective qualities this condition may prompt, and the resulting narrative model of selfhood – the metabolic self. The paper develops its conceptual contribution in close proximity with several artistic examples, especially Eduardo Navarro’s performance In Collaboration with the Sun (2017–2019). The paper is positioned as a contribution to studies of multispecies cohabitation and more-than-human communication, while also developing a narrative strategy for talking about the decentred position of human species in the more-than-human world-making. (shrink)

Immersive experiences are typically associated with entering alternative worlds, often represented as distinct spatial environments. This paper challenges such conventional notions of immersion by arguing that the contexts of immersion aren’t spatially articulated “worlds” but temporally structured “situations” of limited scope. We propose a novel concept of immersion, asserting that being immersed in a situation involves being experientially and actively in sync with its unfolding temporal structure, rhythm, vibe, and pace. Drawing on the phenomenology of (film)experience and following the wave (...) metaphor, we examine the underlying dynamics of time experience in immersive encounters. This expanded understanding of immersion has profound implications, bridging the gap between lm experience and everyday life and revealing the political dimensions of immersive experience. (shrink)

Immersion across media opens our perception to altered states of consciousness. Far from disconnecting us from our surroundings, these experiences reframe how we connect to the world and to others. In this age of technological acceleration, myriad new media forms redefine our immersive habits and patterns of gratification. States of Immersion Across Media invites readers to slow down and reflect on immersive practices, both new and old, their impact on our bodies, the affective attunements they evoke, the disruptions they afford, (...) and the creative encounters they generate. (shrink)

This article draws on Bernard Stiegler and Gilbert Simondon’s work to further interrogate the psychic, social, and political problems raised by the development of Artificial Intelligence. Stiegler’s political philosophy of time-consciousness reveals three concomitants urgencies: human memory is conditioned by industrial supplements that are increasingly disruptive, capitalism has produced an entropic condition where life on earth is threaten by toxic systems, the deployment of technologies of spirits has striped individuals of their psychic and collective individuation. I read media theory along (...) with Simondon’s philosophy to elucidate the question of mediation in today’s reticulated AI-driven society. (shrink)

In my review, I discuss the Polish translation of Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie, published by Słowo/obraz terytoria. Originally released in December 2016, Fisher’s collection of thirteen essays explores cultural texts by figures like Howard P. Lovecraft, David Lynch and Joy Division. Fisher employs a theoretical framework heavily influenced by post-Lacanian, post-Derridean and Deleuzean concepts. The translation, of Tymon Adamczewski and Andrzej Karalus, confronted significant challenges, particularly with rendering the terms “weird” and “eerie”. I highlight the paradox of (...) Fisher’s work, which intentionally defies traditional academic boundaries, inducing discomfort in readers accustomed to conventional analyses. Fisher’s exploration of disruptions and unsettling presences or absences is effectively conveyed in the Polish edition. The review notes the vibrant discourse the translation has provoked in Poland, drawing interest from various academic fields. I conclude that Fisher’s work transcends traditional categories, necessitating new frameworks for understanding, and the Polish edition has significantly invigorated philosophical discussions. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse Alison Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memories from a phenomenological perspective. Prosthetic memory, while sharing similarities with both personal and collective memory, is neither exclusively personal nor strictly collective, emerging as a product of new media in mass communication. According to Landsberg, prosthetic memories have four main characteristics: the recaller experiences them as firsthand accounts despite not personally living through the events, these memories often revolve around traumatic events, have a commodified form, and are ethically useful. (...) Using Husserl’s theories on memory consciousness and image consciousness, and contemporary phenomenological research on violence, I provide a phenomenological account for the first three characteristics of prosthetic memory. The key factors contributing to their quasi-personal and quasi-collective nature lie, on the one hand, in the presence of imagistic violence and, on the other hand, in their mass-mediated image character. (shrink)

(Deutsch:) Es werden zunächst drei Hinsichten unterschieden, nach denen die in einer Situation offenstehenden Möglichkeiten vorstrukturiert erscheinen: materiell, sozial und subjektiv. Während in materieller Hinsicht Möglichkeiten schlicht vorgegeben sind, werden Möglichkeiten gesellschaftlich als zulässig oder unzulässig skandiert, d.i. hervorgehoben, oder bleiben unskandiert. In subjektiver Hinsicht sind es vor allem die Fähigkeiten des Einzelnen, die diese Möglichkeiten er- oder verschließen. Technisierung erscheint in dieser Perspektive als sichernde Vorstrukturierung von Möglichkeitsräumen, die subjektiv stets mit der Abblendung oder Abschattung bestimmter Sachverhalte und Möglichkeiten, (...) der Erzeugung einer Zone der Latenz, einhergeht. Wie aus emanzipatorischer Perspektive mit dieser Dynamik umzugehen ist, ist Thema des letzten Abschnitts. -/- (English:) At the beginning of the text, I distinguish between three respects in which the options and possibilities within a given situation are prestructured: materially, socially, and subjectively. While certain options and possibilities are simply predetermined by the physical structure of a situation, many options are socially accentuated (skandiert) as admissible or inadmissible, while other options remain unaccented. With respect to the subject, options are primarily made accessible and disclosed through the particular capabilities of the agent. From such a point of view, mechanization (Technisierung) can be described as the safe-guarding prestructuring of spaces of possibility, which is always linked with the fading of certain circumstances and possibilities, the establishment of a domain of latency. How to cope with this dynamic from an emancipatory perspective is the subject of the last section of the paper. (shrink)

In this essay, I present an alternative philosophical approach to meta-curating. While the debate surrounding the meta-curating of content often centers around technology like post-digital art, I prefer to take a broader perspective and examine its ontological implications. I consider the realist or anti-realist assumptions of meta-curating through Jean Baudrillard’s concept of seduction and Giorgio Agamben’s idea of spectrality. Both simulacrum and spectrality tend to support an anti-realist approach to meta-curating where the value of the object is made fragile when (...) constantly predetermined by a superficially seductive or spectrally floating context. Against meta-curating as anti-realist, I argue that meta-curation is realist. As a case, the seductive and the spectral in Zaha Hadid’s Morpheus in Macao demonstrate that meta-curating does not completely disregard, but rather raises the question of how to establish an antifragile realism prompted by an architectural object. (shrink)

The news media is a critical source of information for the public. However, it neglects the interests of the poor. In this paper, we explore why this happens, why it matters, and what might be done about it. As to why this happens, we identify two main reasons: because of the way that media is funded and because of the composition of its journalists and its sources. As to why this matters, we argue that this neglect is problematic for three (...) main reasons: it deprives the poor of vital information; it contributes to public support for or acceptance of policies that harm the interests of the poor; and it undermines political equality. And as to what might be done about it, we suggest two proposals: proposals that change the composition of who makes the news and proposals that change how the media is funded. (shrink)

The dissemination of information in times of crisis or emergency is distinctive since the affected individuals may take, process, and act on information differently. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted “the right message at the right time from the right person can save lives.” This study elaborates on the principles of crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) in the realistic narrative, and notes that a successful CERC should be prompt, accurate, veracious, empathetic, respectful, and promote meaningful action. (...) Since pandemics are not only biomedical but also social, political, economic, and cultural incidents, critical communication in the time of a pandemic is of crucial significance. Hence, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is assessed as a recent and important case study. This pandemic had four chief challenges; including that since the disease is caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus the assumptions about the disease have been revised numerously and rapidly. In addition, the cumulative scale and scope of COVID-19 which is in excess of 627 million confirmed cases, and approximately 6.58 million deaths worldwide remained a strain. Another concern was the overwhelming uncertainty and evolving trajectory of the pandemic about how and when it ends or enters the endemic stage of the outbreak. Finally, the overabundance of amplification and dissemination of both accurate and inaccurate information led to an infodemic. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals used the internet as an important resource for seeking health-related information. However, the infodemic and the other aforementioned challenges made distinguishing up-to-date accurate information a more arduous task, and CERC and pandemic-related communication are even more crucial. Hence, a multi-dimensional set of skills is required to overcome these challenges whether amidst or after the pandemic. Therefore, a multi-stakeholder approach towards an overarching and comprehensive metaliteracy that “provides an integrated and inclusive framework to cultivate critical thinking and proficiency in comprehending data, information, visuals and the media” is essential. This study recommends and elaborates on how to incorporate metaliteracy into crisis and risk communication at governmental, organizational, and individual levels. (shrink)

Can we say we live in a post-digital condition? It depends. This paper sets out to distinguish between the current mass digital culture and an authentic post-digital culture. If we mean “post-digital” as the full internalization and awareness of the result of the so-called digital revolution, then it is necessary a philosophical work to discuss related problems, identify the causes and propose solutions. An authentic philosophy of digital will, however, have to start from a clarification of the terms and basic (...) objects of its investigation. Here media theory is inserted as an analytical tool: the purpose of this essay is to outline a road map for a good media theory that interfaces with questions of definition of digital, also in light of the notions of space, time, and matter. As will be seen, the description given here for a “good media theory” does, in fact, coincide with an already existing – and inserted in the contemporary debate – school. In conclusion we will try to delineate the field of philosophical inquiry opened by the clarification brought by the previous analysis, and to suggest a general framework within which philosophy will have to move in order to finally reach the authentic post-digital condition. (shrink)

Focusing upon the five books of his early Hermes series, this article argues that Michel Serres furnishes an accomplished, unconventional philosophical account of communication and mediation-a structuralist epistemology designed to comprehend the sciences in their complexity and plurality-that, even decades after its first publication, has significant value for media theory. Two key themes within this pentalogy are highlighted: firstly, its emphasis upon motifs of communication, transport, and circulation, attempting to grasp the scientific field in topological terms, as a kind of (...) networked encyclopaedia; and secondly, its attempt to account for the intricate relationship between the formal and the empirical in all theorization. (shrink)

This chapter focuses upon Michel Serres' Hermes pentalogy, examining the way in which Serres grapples with one of the most persistent philosophical problems: namely, how philosophy, as a discursive form, might gesture toward that which remains external to all discourse—in simple terms, how philosophers might render the incommunicable communicable. Serres, it is argued, makes use of the conceptual affordances of the mathematical sciences in order to foreground that which philosophy has typically neglected: the background noise that lies behind all communication. (...) Paradoxically, it is argued, such methods communicate noise by formalizing it, stripping it of its noisiness. In this fashion, noise remains both internal and external to Serres’ structuralist method: it is always present within philosophical communication, and this presence can in some way be mathematized, but it can never be truly represented in itself, only grasped as a residuum – something left behind, abandoned, filtered out. (shrink)

The Kantian model of ethics is premised upon the apodictic certainty of a law of pure practical reason which is in turn the foundation for an absolute transcendental freedom. This law, the categorical imperative, is the objective and universally valid determining ground of the will, and is irreducible to any empirically determined judgement of desire. Such a model, whereby we locate this moral law within ourselves even as it points us toward the infinite horizon of the unconditioned, imagines the rational (...) human being to be ultimately autonomous in relation to any empirical determination. In this chapter, I wish to argue that such a conception of morality has become more and more implausible in an age of ubiquitous technical mediation; instead, we find ourselves in thrall to a moral law that is imposed upon us by an economic and socio-technical apparatus unconcerned with the finite temporalities of human thought and action: namely, a categorical imperative of speed, which incessantly pushes us toward an interminable acceleration of our labour and our everyday practices, treating the elimination of temporal lag as a moral duty. This imperative positions humans not as ends in themselves, but as the means for pursuing a teleology premised upon an abstract and unsustainable calculation of efficiency. (shrink)

This article considers Friedrich Kittler’s deterministic media theory as both an appropriation and mutation of Michel Foucault’s archaeological method. Focusing on these two thinkers’ similar but divergent conceptions of the “death of man,” it will be argued that Kittler’s approach attempts to expunge archaeology of its last traces of Kantian transcendentalism by locating the causal agents of epistemic change within the domain of empirical experience, but in doing so, actually amplifies the anthropological vestiges that Foucault hoped to eradicate. The result (...) is an alluring but dogmatically positivist theory of mediatic causality that, in spite of its best efforts, can only reify, rather than dispel, the image of “so-called man.”. (shrink)

This article examines the ontology and politics of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres trilogy, focusing in particular upon the notion of microspherical enclosure explicated in the first volume of this series. Noting Sloterdijk's unusual alignment of his philosophy with media theory, three main contentions are put forward. Firstly, that Sloterdijk's reconfiguration of Heidegger's fundamental ontology represents a largely unacknowledged renunciation of the primacy of Being-towards-death in the authentic existence of Dasein, foregrounding instead an originary co-belonging between mother and child. Secondly, that Sloterdijk (...) borrows from media theory a concern regarding the facticity of all communication, grounding philosophical discourse in the determinate locality of its origin, but does so while exalting a pre-natal communicative immediacy that would seem to disparage the everydayness of Dasein. Finally, that Sloterdijk's oft-justified scepticism regarding globalization often retreats into an anti-cosmopolitanism that, in its nostalgia for the comfort, security and immediacy of the matrixial co-belonging, evinces a covert but potentially noxious politics of exclusion. (shrink)

Introduction to a special issue of the journal entitled 'Gilbert Simondon: media and technics'.

Since the late-1980s the rise of the Internet and the emergence of the Networked Society have led to a rapid and profound transformation of everyday life. Underpinning this revolution is the computer – a media technology that is capable of not only transforming itself, but almost every other machine and media process that humans have used throughout history. In _Philosophy of Media_, Hassan and Sutherland explore the philosophical and technological trajectory of media from Classical Greece until today, casting a new (...) and revealing light upon the global media condition. Key topics include: the mediation of politics the question of objectivity automata and the metaphor of the machine analogue and digital technological determinism. Laid out in a clear and engaging format, _Philosophy of Media_ provides an accessible and comprehensive exploration of the origins of the network society. It is essential reading for students of philosophy, media theory, politics, history and communication studies. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillards Kulturphilosophie läßt sich durch die Behauptung charakterisieren, daß die Medien in der modernen Kultur vorherrschend geworden sind. Seine These, die Medien hätten jeden Bezug zu einer von ihnen unabhängigen Realität verloren, haben zahlreiche Autorinnen und Autoren nihilistisch genannt. Das Zutreffende dieser Kennzeichnung verdankt sich im Wesentlichen einem eingeschränkten, auf das 19. Jahrhundert zurückweisenden Begriff des Nihilismus. Allerdings nimmt Baudrillard auf Phänomene Bezug, die er historisch später verortet und die sich ihrer Struktur nach kategorial von den Funktionen der Medien (...) im 19. Jahrhundert unterscheiden. Es gelingt ihm hierbei nicht, den allgemeinen Realitätsverlust, den er vor allem auf den wachsenden Einfluß von Wissenschaft und Technik im 20. Jahrhundert zurückführt, überzeugend nachzuweisen. -/- Als wolle er diesen Mangel beheben, führt Baudrillard in späteren Schriften weitere Struktureigenschaften der kulturellen Mediendominanz ein. Zu diesen Fortentwicklungen gehört die durch Medienmacht erzeugte „Transparenz“, die nicht zuletzt die restlose Durchsichtigkeit aller Zustände und Prozesse meint. Es ist dieses Merkmal, das Baudrillard 1981 selbst mit einem Nihilismusbegriff in Verbindung bringt. Der Nihilismus der Transparenz beansprucht, das spezifisch Neue der Sinnlosigkeit in zunehmend wissenschafts- und technikbestimmten Gesellschaften zu erfassen. Obwohl sich die Schwächen der Medientheorie in seiner Auffassung des Nihilismus reflektieren, gelingt es ihm, Phänomene der Nichtigkeit zu beschreiben, für die man gute Gründe hat anzunehmen, daß sie sich durch keinen Werte- oder Einstellungswandel mehr aufheben lassen. Um diese Einsicht zu begründen, muß man Baudrillards Medientheorie allerdings gleichsam vom Kopf auf die Füße stellen. Nicht auf einen evidenten, alles umfassenden Realitätsverlust, sondern umgekehrt auf einen Teil der vermutlichen Realitätsgehalte der Medien läßt sich die drohende Ausdehnung der Transparenz zurückführen. (shrink)

It is common for social theorists to utilize the metaphors of ‘flow’, ‘fluidity’, and ‘liquidity’ in order to substantiate the ways in which speed and mobility form the basis for a new kind of information or network society. Yet rarely have these concepts been sufficiently theorized in order to establish their relevance or appropriateness. This article contends that the notion of flow as utilized in social theory is profoundly metaphysical in nature, and needs to be judged as such. Beginning with (...) a discussion of the accelerating timescape that characterizes the network society, it will then move on to examine three main issues with this ‘metaphysics of flux’. First, that the concept of flows unjustly privileges the process of becoming and, as a result, is unable to account for the materiality, substantiality, and agency of the objects being mobilized, and the contingency of their mediation. Second, that it posits the accelerating tendencies of capital as an ontological inevitability, thus discounting resistance to such forces. Finally, that it ignores the human faculty for reason and speculative thought in developing alternative means of political praxis. The solution, it will be argued, is not to abandon metaphysical accounts of the network society, but rather to challenge those accounts that, in exhibiting a crude empiricism, work to justify the status quo. (shrink)

In recent years it has become increasingly common in the United States and in the United Kingdom for newspapers and other media to expose problematic aspects of the private lives of political figures; or, since the facts may already be in the public domain, to draw wider attention to them and to make them the subject of commentary. These “problematic aspects” may include past or continuing physical or psychological illness, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse or dependence, financial difficulties, family (...) conflict, infidelity, or certain sexual proclivities of both the political figures themselves and of their family members or intimates. In the United States, the most prominent cases are probably those of President Bill Clinton in relation to a series of alleged extramarital affairs leading up to the scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and of President John F. Kennedy, also in relation to marital infidelities. The latter exposure was, of course retrospective, as were revelations of similar matters concerning other presidents and holders of high office. Up until the mid-1960s, while it was sometimes known to the press that politicians had “problems” in their private lives, it was rare for these to be made public. Sometimes it might be reported, or more likely hinted, that a figure had a “complex” or “difficult” personal life, and the public was left to infer whatever it might from this . The recent culture of exposure results from a combination of factors, including changed attitudes toward public discussion of sexual conduct, changed standards of sexual behavior, recognition of the scale of Cold War espionage and of its practice of blackmail, a general decline in social deference, a threat to the print media posed by the growth of television, and the rise of satirical entertainment. All of these elements were present in the case that marked the establishment of the culture of exposure in the U.K.: the ‘Profumo scandal’ of 1963. For those unaware of this episode, it may be sufficient to say that it involved the then-secretary of state for war, members of the British aristocracy, a Soviet naval attaché, and a number of “society” call girls, and that it contributed to the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the subsequent fall from power of the Conservative Party. In the United States, the culture of exposure developed somewhat later and took shape in the period of the Watergate scandal, which damaged the American public's perception of the governing classes just as the Profumo scandal had in Britain. (shrink)

Journalists face decisions about which true stories to publish and how to frame the facts in the stories they select. How should they make these decisions? According to what I call the civic attitudes proposal, they should aim to promote civically useful attitudes in their audience. This is a surprisingly popular default view. I argue we should reject it. It imposes informational risks, is anti-egalitarian, and undermines one source of the civic value in civically valuable attitudes. Instead, I suggest, journalists (...) best contribute to democracy by playing a dedicatedly skeptical role in a zetetic division of labor. (shrink)

In contemporary democratic politics, political actors frequently shape the presentation of public policy outcomes through the selection of comparison benchmarks, time windows, and statistical metrics. This narrative approach, based on relative value changes, can lead to divergent public understandings of long-term trends and exert significant influence on democratic accountability. Using the 2025–2026 changes in German net migration data as a case study, this paper analyzes how political actors shape public perception through the selection of comparison benchmarks, time windows, and indicator (...) metrics. On this basis, the paper proposes the concept of "Reference-Frame Setting Power," defining it as an independent form of informational power and demonstrating its critical role in democratic accountability. The paper examines why the dimension of information presentation in representative democracy constitutes a theoretical blind spot in democratic accountability, reveals the formation mechanism of the "triple attenuation" funnel, and argues for an information infrastructure solution based on mandatory long-term data visualization. This paper contends that institutionalized long-term data visualization is not democratic accountability itself, but rather the information infrastructure required for democratic accountability—a low-cost, high-potential cognitive debiasing tool. (shrink)

Mainstream news journalism [MNJ] faces a practical dilemma founded on a theoretical mistake about objectivity. In this article, we aim to bring this mistake to light and to propose a new model for its practice. MNJ has over the past century attempted to achieve its ultimate democratic goals — informing citizens and holding those in positions of power to account — by adhering to objectivity as a master value. This commitment to objectivity can be specified in terms of principles, such (...) as the principle of reporting ‘just the facts’ without interpretation. But, we argue, taking principles like this one to be maxims that must be followed in every circumstance tends to undermine the democratic goals of MNJ. Practitioners of MNJ therefore face a dilemma: either jettison objectivity as a master value or shirk the pursuit of its ultimate democratic goals. We argue that they should take the former route and, instead, adopt a conception of MNJ as a form of democratic political agency. Under this conception, MNJ aims at informing citizens and holding those in power to account while eschewing the partisan agendas of politicians or advocacy groups. We defend this conception against alternatives, including characterizations of MNJ as mere propaganda and the mistaken conflation of MNJ’s democratic goals with those of so-called activist journalism. In so doing, we try to provide the outlines of a philosophical approach to journalism, a profession that philosophers have largely ignored despite its social importance. (shrink)

The News Physics Case Analysis Scoring Rubric (v1.0) is an operational instrument developed within the News Physics (Haberin Fiziği) framework — the physical model of journalism practice founded by Levent Bulut as part of the Physics of Reality ecosystem. -/- While the News Physics Founding Manifesto (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19545072) establishes the three core laws and theoretical operators — News Pressure (Np = Ss × Tu × Ie), Institutional Resistance (Ir = Pp × Ed / Ec), and Information Entropy (Hs) — this (...) rubric translates those operators into a granular, case-level measurement tool. -/- The rubric introduces four independent metrics, each scored on a 1–5 scale: -/- System Fit (SF) measures the structural compatibility of a news story with its publishing environment — the alignment of agenda, channel, period, and social climate. Formally expressed as SF = (Ss × Tu) / Environmental Resistance. -/- Actor Power (AP) measures the real impact capacity of the story's central subject — individual, institutional, or state actor — determined by actual sphere of influence rather than formal title. AP constitutes the actor sub-component of Social Significance (Ss = AP × Issue Weight × Social Contact). -/- Tension (T) measures the normalised conflict between News Pressure and Institutional Resistance. It captures the physical struggle over publication — not the ethical value of the story. When Editorial Courage (Ec) approaches zero, Tension approaches maximum and Institutional Resistance approaches infinity: the mathematical definition of censorship. -/- Diffusion (D) measures actual post-publication spread through the time derivative of News Pressure (D = dNp/dt). A positive derivative indicates the story is gaining momentum; a negative derivative indicates entropy is winning. -/- The four metrics are independent — high System Fit does not imply high Tension. Together they produce a physical profile of any news case, enabling comparative analysis across different stories, outlets, and political contexts. The rubric also functions as a Fake Np Injection detection tool: disproportionate Diffusion relative to low Actor Power and System Fit signals artificial pressure amplification. -/- The document is published in both Turkish and English and includes a complete worked example (the fictional "Minister's Company" case), an integrated case analysis protocol, and a profile interpretation guide. -/- This rubric is the second formal publication in the News Physics series, following the Founding Manifesto. It is part of the Physics of Reality ecosystem alongside the Physics of Literature (Edebiyatın Fiziği). -/- Related publication: News Physics — Founding Manifesto v1.0. (shrink)

Much-lauded Guardian journalist Marina Hyde's book What Just Happened?! is a collection of her Guardian columns from 2016 to 2023. It covers some important historical events: the British vote to leave the European Union and coronavirus. It also covers Trump in American politics. I find the opening columns overly preoccupied with the style of politicians as public performers: put crudely, can so-and-so pull off the Alpha Male or Alpha Female style (or big league politician style, if you prefer that term)? (...) A reader with my preferences who opens the book and samples these, may well give up. (Prior to the vote, I spent hours listening to economists' predictions on the likely effects of leaving.) I find that Hyde improves in content-orientation later, interestingly engaging with arguments to do with communism and death. But I suspect there is a "rhythm" to this: a content-and-argument rich article is followed by a dip. Has someone found out that producing accessible and substance-oriented everyday actually leads to madness? (Her front cover clothing style appears to be influenced by me - though how can I prove this? Anyway, my use of such tricks of pacing is minimal, because I didn't know them!) I find Hyde very talented. The book will be of interest to historians, I guess, but I believe this is her public persona, not her, if that matters to them. And it is not exactly what I am looking for, even as comedy, though other reviewers find it funny. I have my own political comedy! (shrink)

News Physics is a discipline that models journalistic practice through physical laws. It introduces three measurable operators — News Pressure (Np), Institutional Resistance (Ir), and Information Entropy (Hs) — to replace intuition-based editorial decisions with a calculable framework. -/- The discipline establishes that publication decisions follow the condition Np > Ir, that unpublished stories obey entropy laws and carry measurable half-lives, and that fake news operates as artificial Np injection (ΔNp_fake) rather than as misinformation in the conventional sense. Echo chambers (...) are modelled as frozen thermodynamic systems sustained by high Ir and recycled artificial pressure. -/- News Physics runs parallel to the Physics of Literature within the Physics of Reality ecosystem, both founded by Levent Bulut. Where the Physics of Literature models the physical transmission of fictional truth, News Physics models the physical flow of factual information. Together they form a unified epistemological framework in which physical laws eliminate subjectivity across both fictional and journalistic domains. -/- This founding manifesto establishes the three core laws, four axioms, falsification protocol, and research agenda of the discipline. (shrink)

Directed by Emile de Antonio, the 1968 American documentary film In the Year of the Pig employs various historical footage and many interviews to show American involvement in the Vietnam War. Besides sequences of interviews and news footage, the opening and ending of the film also shoot sequences of the natural landscape of the river and mountain in Vietnam. With intentional montages of the natural landscape in the documentation of war, In the Year of the Pig establishes a contrast between (...) the beauty of nature and a keynote of fierce fighting, heavy injury and political speeches. Sequences of natural landscape thereby offers a soothing visual experience and evokes a sense of what the nature might be in Vietnam before the war. Camera movement transforms natural landscape in Vietnam into a cinematic landscape, a dynamic medium where visual elements of river, mountain and land are further reproduced and remodeled in other sequences such as American intrusion and refugees’ escape. In addition to capturing the landscape, moving camera also mimics moving weapon to impose a colonial and military perspective on the aesthetic looking and shows a military predation and destruction of Vietnam’s territory through intentional montage and superimposition of voice-overs on the visual landscape. The militarized relation between the camera eye and cinematic landscape further problematizes the relation between viewership and perception beauty in a colonial and wartime narration. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists largely agree that fake news is not just necessarily untruthful, but necessarily insincere: it’s produced either with the intention to deceive or an indifference toward its truth. Against this, I argue insincerity is neither a necessary nor obviously typical feature of fake news. The main argument proceeds in two stages. The first, methodological step develops classification criteria for identifying instances of fake news. By attending to expressed theoretical and practical interests, I observe how our classification practices (...) turn on worries about fake news’s unique political-epistemic risks. From this, I argue (i) theories of fake news should capture independent mechanisms that realise these risks and (ii) the manifestation of them suffices for classifying a news story as fake news. The second step applies the classification criteria to bad science journalism. I argue the systematic epistemic faults in bad science journalism manifest the same political-epistemic risks we see in fake news, which suffices to justify classifying it as fake news. But since such faults aren’t plausibly attributed to its propagators being insincere, insincerity doesn’t function independently as a mechanism for realising fake news’s political-epistemic risks. Thus, I conclude, we should exclude insincerity from our accounts of the phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper examines mediators’ epistemic obligations during expert interviews. Drawing on science communication, journalism ethics, and social epistemology, I argue that mediators have an epistemic duty to ask good questions of experts. After outlining how expert testimony can harm audiences epistemically and providing a normative framework for mediators’ duty to inform, I examine three strategies to discharge this duty. The credentials monitoring approach, which limits mediators’ role in verifying experts’ qualifications and competence, fails to prevent harmful testimony from genuine experts. (...) The interference approach, which requires mediators to challenge expert claims directly, imposes unrealistically high epistemic standards on mediators and risks counterproductive non-peer disagreements. I propose an alternative: the good questioning approach. By asking expanding and contesting questions that prompt experts to justify claims and make evidence accessible, mediators can fulfill their epistemic duty without needing domain-specific expertise. This framework enhances our understanding of distributed epistemic responsibility in public scientific discourse and offers practical guidance for improving journalistic practice in expert interviews. (shrink)

What should we do as artificial intelligence improves in its essay writing skills. Write all the solid competent essays audiences hope from it now, before it can? Forgive me people opposed to this approach. (I fear I shall be left alone with the toughest of Anglo-Saxon men, I who have never actually met men-men? "Be you man or wall? How did you even come into existence?”) This paper responds to Karl Krauss's remark about journalists "No ideas and the ability to (...) express them" conveyed on Leiter Reports. Aside from the response "I want news not clever reflection," I observe that frameworks for writing an article which involve no new ideas are useful for conveying information (clarifying “new idea” for people who cannot understand this sentence). I refer to a Rachel Aroesti article as an example. But why not just present information without the trite opinions, upload lecture notes say? In response to this puzzle, I draw attention to what I call Monica goods, an important category for understanding the world I believe. (shrink)

Can the social world be predicted? If it cannot, can any study of it count as scientific? Isn't what distinguishes science from non-science successful prediction? This paper argues that social anthropology can predict some social change. It introduces a structural-functionalist theory of literary fashion to counter the objection that functionalist anthropology ignores social change. Literary fashions are there to maintain social structure. If there is a structure of the best-and-the-rest and a foreign writer appears in-between, the rest do what that (...) foreign writer does, upping their game, so that he or she appears as merely one of them. I argue that this structural-functionalist theory of literary fashion enables prediction. (shrink)

Anonymous argumentation has recently been the focus of public controversy: flash points include the outing of pseudonymous bloggers by newspapers and the launch of an academic journal that expressly permits pseudonymous authorship. However, the controversy is not just a recent one—similar debates took place in the nineteenth century over the then common practice of anonymous journalism. Amongst the arguments advanced by advocates of anonymous argumentation in either era is the contention that it is essential if the widest range of voices (...) are to be heard; amongst the counterarguments of its critics, that it weakens the credibility of individual arguments and irresponsibly cheapens the standard of public discourse. This paper explores some implications of the controversy for the ethics of argumentation in general and virtue theories of argumentation in particular. (shrink)

How can scientists and science communicators effectively engage the public in times of crisis and in the face of pervasive uncertainty? Drawing on the experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the escalating climate crisis, the three essays in this volume examine key dimensions of this challenge. What roles should scientists play in policy-making? How can the spread of fake news in science communication be curtailed? And how can we represent uncertainties in a way that upholds the credibility of scientific knowledge?

This document is a brief summary of Valentini's paradox and solutions, not all of which are on PhilPapers already.