This research addresses the challenges related to the collection and transmission of measurement data during the monitoring of military and other strategically significant objects. The solution involved creating a proprietary distributed system that operates on Wi-Fi technology and leverages the national military radio communication system for long-distance data transfer. Measurements were gathered for several key parameters, including the distance between cracks and joints, magnetometer readings, and the position and potential tilt of objects across three axes based on accelerometer and gyroscope (...) data. A significant aspect of the study was the server setup, which allowed for the creation of new data reception channels. These channels were essential for the further processing and analysis of measurement results. This system is capable of addressing complex issues such as predicting the technical condition of strategically important objects. The thoroughness of the analysis enables the identification and diagnosis of potential errors, as well as the detection of delays within the communication system. Additionally, optimizing energy consumption parameters extended the duration of research activities at remote locations, which ultimately prolongs the lifespan and maintenance intervals of the control system. The flexibility in programming the module boards and compatibility with various electronic measuring sensors make it possible to adjust the system for a wide range of applications. This adaptability significantly broadens the scope of research, expanding it to diverse fields such as agriculture, ecology, energy, healthcare, meteorology, and more. (shrink)

This essay examines the Brazilian deforestation debate to explicate the beginnings of a post-modern theory of argumentation. Modernist argumentation reflects two distinct approaches, found in the deforestation controversy. The first approach, ‘universal minimilization,’ presumes that the survival of humanity is sufficient grounds upon which to base argument. The alternative, ‘strategic manipulation,’ results in argument being employed as a technical device to advance one's interest. In place of the modernist approach, we offer an ecocentric theory of argumentation. This conception calls (...) for individuals to set aside differences in values to sustain humanity but at the same time to be sensitive to differences in costs and benefits that accrue from common efforts to persons differently situated. Additionally, this view operates with a tacit working assumption that environmental questions are not discrete entities to be evaluated separately. Rather, people must act collectively on a range of interconnected issues to ensure survival. (shrink)

Modernity emerges as an era in which the correlation between intelligence and technical mastery becomes the central axis of social and cultural development. These two concepts function as the leitmotif of the modern age, shaping the way human beings understand themselves and the world. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s analysis in The Human Condition, this article examines how technical rationality has transformed the philosophical tradition and the foundations of scientific thought. The relationship between observation and thought undergoes a (...) profound reconfiguration, contributing to the re-formation of a “new human being.” Paradoxically, introspection becomes a central source of meaning, mediating the tension between thought and action, intelligence and mastery. The principle of utility, a pillar of utilitarian philosophy, plays a dual role: it drives technical progress while simultaneously exposing the limitations of modern thought. This article clarifies the internal tensions of modernity and demonstrates how the modern age ultimately contradicts its own foundational claims. (shrink)

This article examines how emerging technologies – particularly artificial intelligence – disrupt the moral and institutional foundations of contemporary military practice. While strategic documents from the United States, NATO, and other major actors anticipate profound institutional transformation driven by AI, their treatment of ethics largely confines itself to legal compliance and technical safeguards, leaving the ethical role of military leadership in managing disruptive change underexamined. Drawing on Seumas Miller’s distinction between social institutions that are merely instrumental to collective goods (...) and those whose defining ends are constitutive of such goods, the article argues that the military belongs to the latter category. Because the military’s core function – defending the sovereignty of a polity – is itself morally significant, technological disruption of its organizational structures simultaneously constitutes ethical disruption. The article thus reconceives change management during periods of technological transition as calling for a specific kind of military prudence, a practical wisdom exercised within and through the institution’s role-mediated ethical practices. By analyzing three concrete modes of techno-moral disruption, the article shows how AI may reshape ethical standards, redistribute professional knowledge, and alter organizational ethos, and why navigating these transformations responsibly is a central task of military virtue. (shrink)

It is argued that we cannot understand the notion of proper functions of artefacts independently of social notions. Functions of artefacts are related to social facts via the use of artefacts. The arguments in this article can be used to improve existing function theories that look to the causal history of artefacts to determine the function. A view that takes the intentions of designers into account to determine the proper function is both natural and often correct, but it is shown (...) that there are exceptions to this. Taking a social constitutive element into account may amend these backwards looking theories. An improved theory may either have a disjunctive form—either the history or collective intentions determine the proper function—or, as is suggested in the article, be in the form of an encompassing account that views the designers’ intentions as social, in so far as they are accepted by the users. Designers have authority, which is a social fact. The views argued for here are applied to two existing theories of artefact functions, a causal historic approach and an action theoretic approach.Keywords: Function; Artefact; Evaluative judgement; Action; Collective intentionality. (shrink)

Evolution is seen to be entering a bio-technological phase. Nietzsche's affirmation that "man is something that must be overcome" no longer has a rhetorical ring given the means at our disposal at the end of the twentieth century. Viroid Life boldly challenges existing explanations of these changes inherited from modernity, arguing that they have exhausted their usefulness and new models are needed to guide us in mapping through the future. Exploring and critically examining the new realities of artificial life that (...) confront us, Viroid Life brings together the tradition of Nietszchean thought with new work in exploratory biology and machinic thinking. Offering insights from Darwin to Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord and the Situationist movement, Pearson provides a brave starting point for any inquiry on the future of the "human". (shrink)

Motivated by the significant amount of successful collaborative problem solving activity on the Web, we ask: Can the accumulated information propagation behavior on the Web be conceived as a giant machine, and reasoned about accordingly? In this paper we elaborate a thesis about the computational capability embodied in information sharing activities that happen on the Web, which we term socio-technical computation, reflecting not only explicitly conditional activities but also the organic potential residing in information on the Web.

This paper describes the relationship between technics and desire in light of Bernard Stiegler’s new critique of political economy. The starting point for the analysis is Stiegler’s critique of the reinterpretation of Freud’s legacy by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. The context of the analysis is the ongoing mutation of consumer capitalism into computational capitalism—one in which automated calculation systems are used to control all forms of mental and affective human activity. Digital automatization, I argue, encourages a different view (...) of what Marcuse called “the automatization of the superego.” It also requires us to rethink to what extent desire is conditioned techno-logically beyond the limits of Marcuse’s critique of Freud, capitalism and technology. The article pays special attention to Stiegler’s reinterpretation of the theory of sublimation in relation to contemporary capitalism and its technological infrastructure (from television to digital platforms). It is also an attempt to include the question concerning technology in psychoanalytic thinking. (shrink)

With the concept of the technical image, Flusser indicates a historical shift in the structure of Western society.1 Technical images, as found in photographs, films, videos, computer terminals, and television screens, designate images produced by an apparatus designed to create programmed information. Contrary to traditional images which carry significance through representation as seen in paintings, technical images are surfaces that operate according to “inverted vectors of meaning.”2 The meaning of a technical image is not found in (...) what the image signifies but in what it projects. In other words, technical images are less about the representation of the world and more about modeling the subject’s relation to and vision of reality. As such, technical images are “instructional programs” designed to inculcate significance, shape behavior, and direct subjects on how to make sense of the world.3 The surfaces of technical images move away from a mimetic representation of the real to inscribe concepts as connotative, as opposed to denotative, forms of signification. However, traditional images and technical images are not entirely disconnected from one another. Together they shape the posthistorical phase of humanity, a phase in which humans’ relationship to reality is increasingly conditioned and modulated by embedded codification. This codification is produced by apparatuses that calculate probability. These apparatuses are opaque because they no longer require the knowledge of their operation by the subject that handles them. In other words: traditional images are “observations of objects,” while technical images are “computation of concepts.”4. (shrink)

The present study is dedicated to the analysis of the transformation of the Chinese porcelain industry during the Republic period (1912–1949) under the influence of Western industrialization. Traditional studies often describe this period as a "decline," ignoring the creative practices of local artisans and enterprises. Unlike traditional approaches, this study examines the technical innovations of this period and cultural synthesis. The focus is on three key areas of development in the porcelain industry. Firstly, the technological modernization is considered through (...) the example of the Jiangxi Porcelain Company, where the introduction of mechanized production methods allowed for increased competitiveness of the products. Secondly, artistic innovations are analyzed, particularly the reforms in the "new fencai" technique developed by the "Eight Friends of Zhushan" association. Thirdly, the cultural revival is explored through the recreation of traditional Longquan celadon in private workshops. The methodological foundation of the study combines the analysis of historical documents, the examination of specific examples, and an interdisciplinary approach that merges methods from art history, the history of technology, and globalization studies. The scientific novelty of the work lies in rethinking the Republic period as an era of creative synthesis rather than decline. The implications of this period demonstrate that the Chinese porcelain industry successfully adapted to global challenges while preserving its cultural identity. Technological borrowings, such as the mechanization of production, were combined with artistic innovations in the "new fencai" technique. At the same time, the revival of traditional celadon porcelain showcased a strategy of cultural reinterpretation in response to market demand. As a result of the study, it is concluded that despite the objective constraints associated with political instability, the porcelain industry of the Republic period developed effective models for adapting traditional crafts to the conditions of early globalization. This historical experience is relevant to contemporary discussions about the balance between technological modernization and the preservation of cultural heritage. (shrink)

This article explores evolving posthumanist representations of eros, technology, and the human condition through two body horror films: David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021). Popular depictions of eros and technology can lean towards a hypermasculine, obsessive, paranoid reading of the machine, usually resulting in the disintegration of desire and with it the human body. These accounts highlight the contested figure of the “transhuman,” an excessive, technologically enhanced version of the human capable of conquering death. Emerging from (...) postmodern critiques against grand narratives of technological progress and neoliberalist development, the critique of the transhuman underscores the impossibility of a harmonious relationship between the human and the technical. While Videodrome depicts technology as an external force intervening in human body enhancement – destroying the essence of the human and its romanticized “humanity” – Titane speculates about nature/artifice and human/technology binaries, situating technology as inherent to the human condition. This paper traces the move from the transhuman character who seeks to dominate technology and encounters human destruction, to a posthuman who is able to integrate the mediation of technology as a fundamental aspect for thinking its humanness. Drawing on the reappraisal of “originary technicity,” the body in Titane becomes with technics and environment, offering a new framework for rethinking desire and eros beyond the body. In doing so, it resists earlier theories of desire as contained, and perhaps, repressed, in the subject. Ultimately, the film embodies the possibility of moving away from the all-too human theories of eros and machine to challenge some posthumanist limitations around essentialist oppositions between nature and technology. Posthumanist frameworks must envision a future where the entanglement of technology and the human serves as a starting point for rethinking the human condition, rather than a nostalgic excess it needs to overcome. (shrink)

Proponents of technical monism argue that artistic functions are technical functions, and that therefore artworks and technical artifacts may be unified under the same theoretical framework. We hold that this view fails because it does not account for the phenomenon of technical malfunction: if artistic functions were technical functions, then artistic malfunctions would be technical malfunctions too. We argue that artistic malfunctions are not technical malfunctions because they cannot meet all the following four (...) criteria: (1) malfunctioning attribution to a technical artifact entails negative evaluation and a reason to avoid use; (2) technical malfunction is caused by a failure of the artifact itself rather than failing circumstances; (3) a malfunctioning technical artifact remains a member of its artifactual kind; (4) malfunctioning technical artifacts are sometimes repaired. Since artistic malfunction cannot meet all these conditions, we claim that artworks and technical artifacts do not share the same type of function and, as such, unification theories based on technical function are untenable. We conclude by suggesting that our account raises broader challenges not only for technical-function-based unification theories, but also for other theories that seek to unify artworks and technical artifacts through a shared notion of function, as well as for accounts of artifact function more broadly. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that technical progress could free humanity from necessity and labour. Taking inspiration from a remark in Arendt's Human Condition, I consider a tension immanent to that idea: the possibility that its realisation requires social transformations that culminate in a world incommensurable with our own and to which our concepts of freedom no longer apply. Drawing on resources from social theory, the philosophy of technology and critical theory, I defend this incommensurability thesis in two (...) steps. I argue, first, that technical progress entails a social dynamic which leads to continuous upward shifts in the level of automation required to free people from work, plausibly extending beyond the sphere of production; second, that this leads the idea of freedom from labour ad absurdum : the widespread automation of human life would render modern concepts of freedom unintelligible. (shrink)

Vol. 24 of Boston Studies In The Philosophy Of Science, this study includes a few essays previously published. It presents a philosophy of technology as a relatively new specialization and is offered in a Heideggerian and phenomenological mode. Contemporary philosophy has presented modern man with a great deal of philosophy of science but little specifically on technology, and Ihde finds Heidegger one of the most insightful sources for such reflection. The book includes specific sections devoted to Heidegger, Jonas, and Ricoeur. (...) Ihde’s interpretation of technology, with its Heideggerian roots, presents an anti-Platonic theory with an emphasis upon the primacy of praxis. Furthermore, he argues for the ontological primacy and priority of technology over science, for science is really the tool of technology. The alternative and more usual scheme presenting science as primary and technology as offering but applied science is fundamentally Platonic, assuming the primacy of theory over practice and mind over matter. Consequently, concern with the primacy of practice necessitates a philosophy of action which itself is primary to a theory of cognition. A science so grounded in and secondary to praxis and technology suggests thereby that science is by no means value free. Any such historical science is both an assertion of certain values and a denial of others. Neither is technology as the ground of science value free, for it is a decision as to how to live the world. Science itself is embodied in its instruments which themselves provide the conditions for its cognition. We may choose to live the world with machines, and consequently serious consideration of the relations of humans and machines is at stake in such inquiry. We can, for example, experience the world through the machine, or the machine itself may become the object in experience. We have only begun to explore the world of instruments and the implications of that world, for an instrumental world raises its own formulation of the problem of determinism, concerning whether the instruments themselves determine the course of the inquiry, although Ihde denies that this is the necessary conclusion. All of the above is to emphasize that the elaboration of technology transforms experience, for the technologies themselves offer an analogy to nature by offering self-extension, by becoming the other, and by providing their own immediate world. The instruments have both a magnifying and reductive office, thus evidencing their lack of neutrality. In these various modes they express a telos of human desire attempting to bring close what otherwise remains hidden. In this process of bringing close there is retained the ever present reflexive temptation to turn back upon the interpretation of the subject its world of instruments. Thus technology offers a manner of transformation both of the world and of the self. There is no presuppositionless vision, for vision has its setting within a set of beliefs as to what is taken as vision, an obvious transformation of the Husserlian phenomenological program of a presuppositionless looking. In technical science there is no "just looking" as the Greeks had thought, and this transformation inevitably has its significant effects upon the very essence of man. In fact, perhaps technology is a most serious expression of the ambiguity of man’s nature so that he has become a threat to himself. Ihde’s exploration of a philosophy of technology is at the same time an exploration of the lebenswelt of modern man. There remains to be explored study of the essence of man who remains potentially so self-destructive via technology, but this is hardly the theme of a philosophy of technology. It is, however, the theme to which the philosophy of technology points. The book is very useful and one might wish that it would receive not only the attention of philosophers but find its way into the serious considerations of the technologists and masters of technology themselves. If it is inevitable that such a hope remains pure utopianism, then we shall all reap the whirlwind.—H.A.D. (shrink)

The connection between the probabilities of conditionals and the corresponding conditional probabilities has long been explored in the philosophical literature, but its implementation faces both technical obstacles and objections on empirical grounds. In this paper I ?rst outline the motivation for the probabilistic turn and Lewis’ triviality results, which stand in the way of what would seem to be its most straightforward implementation. I then focus on Richard Jeffrey’s ’random-variable’ approach, which circumvents these problems by giving up the notion (...) that conditionals denote propositions in the usual sense. Even so, however, the random-variable approach makes counterintuitive predictions in simple cases of embedded conditionals. I propose to address this problem by enriching the model with an explicit representation of causal dependencies. The addition of such causal information not only remedies the shortcomings of Jeffrey’s conditional, but also opens up the possibility of a uni?ed probabilistic account of indicative and counterfactual conditionals. (shrink)

Conditional logics were originally developed for the purpose of modeling intuitively correct modes of reasoning involving conditional—especially counterfactual—expressions in natural language. While the debate over the logic of conditionals is as old as propositional logic, it was the development of worlds semantics for modal logic in the past century that catalyzed the rapid maturation of the field. Moreover, like modal logic, conditional logic has subsequently found a wide array of uses, from the traditional (e.g. counterfactuals) to the exotic (e.g. conditional (...) obligation). Despite the close connections between conditional and modal logic, both the technical development and philosophical exploitation of the latter has outstripped that of the former, with the result that noticeable lacunae exist in the literature on conditional logic. My dissertation addresses a number of these underdeveloped frontiers, producing new technical insights and philosophical applications. -/- I contribute to the solution of a problem posed by Priest of finding sound and complete labeled tableaux for systems of conditional logic from Lewis' V-family. To develop these tableaux, I draw on previous work on labeled tableaux for modal and conditional logic; errors and shortcomings in recent work on this problem are identified and corrected. While modal logic has by now been thoroughly studied in non-classical contexts, e.g. intuitionistic and relevant logic, the literature on conditional logic is still overwhelmingly classical. Another contribution of my dissertation is a thorough analysis of intuitionistic conditional logic, in which I utilize both algebraic and worlds semantics, and investigate how several novel embedding results might shed light on the philosophical interpretation of both intuitionistic logic and conditional logic extensions thereof. -/- My dissertation examines deontic and connexive conditional logic as well as the underappreciated history of connexive notions in the analysis of conditional obligation. The possibility of interpreting deontic modal logics in such systems (via embedding results) serves as an important theoretical guide. A philosophically motivated proscription on impossible obligations is shown to correspond to, and justify, certain (weak) connexive theses. Finally, I contribute to the intensifying debate over counterpossibles, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents, and take—in contrast to Lewis and Williamson—a non-vacuous line. Thus, in my view, a counterpossible like "If there had been a counterexample to the law of the excluded middle, Brouwer would not have been vindicated" is false, not (vacuously) true, although it has an impossible antecedent. I exploit impossible (non-normal) worlds—originally developed to model non-normal modal logics—to provide non-vacuous semantics for counterpossibles. I buttress the case for non-vacuous semantics by making recourse to both novel technical results and theoretical considerations. (shrink)

Conditional logics have traditionally been intended to formalize various intuitively correct modes of reasoning involving conditional expressions in natural language. Although conditional logics have by now been thoroughly studied in a classical context, they have yet to be systematically examined in an intuitionistic context, despite compelling philosophical and technical reasons to do so. This paper addresses this gap by thoroughly examining the basic intuitionistic conditional logic ICK, the intuitionistic counterpart of Chellas’ important classical system CK. I give ICK both (...) worlds semantics and algebraic semantics, and prove that these are equivalent. I give a Gödel-type embedding of ICK into CK and a Glivenko-type embedding of CK into ICK. I axiomatize ICK and prove soundness, completeness, and decidability results. Finally, I discuss extending ICK. (shrink)

This article addresses two interrelated questions in Simondon's philosophy of technology: First, is knowledge artifactual? The Greeks denigrated _technē_ (technics) in favor of _epistêmê_ (knowledge) and considered knowledge to be primarily conceptual, discursive, theoretical, and propositional. Simondon's work points to the possibility that knowledge is primarily _artifactual_ and not propositional. This leads to a second, more difficult, question: If knowledge is primarily artifactual, what led the Greeks to consider knowledge to be primarily discursive and conceptual? I analyze the response given (...) by thinkers such as McLuhan, Havelock, and Goody: it was the technology of _writing_ that made explicit the fundamental elements of language (letters, words, sentences, prose), and thereby separating words from their objects and sentences from their use in conversation — a detachment and "decontextualization" of language through the artifice of writing that became the condition for focusing on definitions, truth, logic, and formal rationality. Logic, in this sense, finds its condition in technics. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture can be defined as the progressive diversification, complexification, and enhancement of technological traits through generations. An outstanding issue is to specify the cognitive bases of this phenomenon. Based on the literature, we identified four potential cognitive factors: namely, theory-of-mind, technical-reasoning, creativity, and fluid-cognitive skills. The goal of the present study was to test which of these factors—or a combination thereof—best predicted the cumulative performance in two experimental, micro-society conditions differing in the nature of the interaction allowed (...) between participants. The task was to build the highest possible tower. Participants were also assessed on the four aforementioned cognitive factors in order to predict cumulative performance and attractiveness. Our findings indicate that technical-reasoning skills are the best predictor of cumulative performance, even if their role may be restricted to the specific technological domain. Theory-of-mind skills may have a facilitator role, particularly in the Communication condition. Creativity can also help in the generation of novel ideas, but it is not sufficient to support innovation. Finally, fluid cognition is not involved in cumulative technological culture. Taken together, these findings suggest that domain-specific knowledge remains critical for explaining cumulative technological culture. (shrink)

In this research, I aim to enquire into the human relation to technology from an evolutionary perspective. To that end, I will elaborate on insights by two major contemporary thinkers, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. I will argue that both develop a fully-fledged philosophy of technology—although they are usually not recognized as philosophers of technology proper—and I will show the convergence and mutual complementarity of their respective approaches. I will highlight how Sloterdijk’s and Stiegler’s (...) stances critically diverge from contemporary philosophy of technology—the so-called empirical turn—and corroborate their claims through recourse to insights coming from twentieth-century philosophical anthropology, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and contemporary evolutionary biology, especially the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). Starting from this conceptual framework, I will submit the idea of human constitutive technicity, i.e., technology belongs to what Jacques Derrida would call the conditions of possibility and impossibility of our lifeform. According to this perspective, human technicity is constitutive, insofar as, first, we could neither survive nor have evolved as we are now without our relation to artefacts. Secondly, technology can also deprive us of our humanity, by altering our lifeform to the point that it could not be considered human anymore or by provoking the actual extinction of the lifeform it has, in turn, contributed to producing. Thirdly, we can develop self-representations, i.e., accounts of what we think it means to be humans, including through scientific practice, only thanks to and based on specific technologies. Fourthly, developments in our technical system may also inhibit our capability to think and, therefore, reflectively think about ourselves. Hence, with this research I set out to underscore the importance of a critical reflection about technology in order to understand the human condition. (shrink)

Digital social analytics is a subset of Big Data methods that is used to understand the social environment in which people and organizations have to act. This paper presents an analysis of eight projects that are experimenting with the use of these methods for various purposes. It shows that two specific technological features influence the work with such methods in all the cases. The first concerns the need to distribute choices about the structure of data to third-party actors and the (...) second concerns the need to balance machine intelligence and human intuition when automating the analysis. These features set specific conditions for knowledge production, and the paper identifies two opposite approaches for engaging with each of these conditions. These features and approaches are finally combined into a two-dimensional affordance space that illustrates how there is flexibility in the way project leaders interact with the features of the data environment. It thereby also shows how digital social analytics come to have different affordances for different projects. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the field of ‘art-science’ collaborations for their perceived capacity to develop new cultural understandings of technology and science. In this article, and through an engagement with the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, I argue that if art-science represents an important site for the formation of an alternate technical culture today, then it is because of the new technical mentalities that such practices might cultivate. Here, creating a new technical mentality (...) is more than just a representational concern with enhancing ‘public awareness’ of technology, instead referring to more material transformations in our embodied capacities for perceiving and affectively engaging with technologies. I flesh this potential out through an encounter with work of Art Orienté objet, whose art-science collaborations challenge the anthropocentric and utilitarian mentalities of contemporary bioscience through explorations of the transindividual conditions of human embodiment and its material immersion within nonhuman ecologies. (shrink)

What are the politics of technical knowledge in the world of contemporary art? Intellectual apprehensions of art, by privileging the insights of texts, (critical) theory, and abstract ideas over and above the empirical truths of objects themselves, do not simply explain contemporary art—they sustain it. They define how contemporary art can and should be known and, in turn, the forms of experience that are conceptually relevant to this understanding. Always already present within the art world, however, if largely invisible (...) across its ranks, is an entirely different way of knowing that concretely contests these defining ways by which art is conventionally understood.Technical knowledge is a vital presence in the world of contemporary art. Technical practitioners—fabricators, riggers, engineers, and conservators, among others—work behind the scenes to set into place the material conditions of what contemporary art is, how it is evolving, and how museums and gallery spaces are, in their architectures, evolving along with it. In this article, I draw on firsthand interviews with fabricators at the Walla Walla Foundry, a commercial art foundry in Walla Walla, Washington, to dissect how these individuals engage art on their own terms, thus challenging the academic epistemology of the institutional art world they invisibly define. This epistemic tension (between academic and technical ways of knowing), I argue, is relevant to our scholarly understanding of what the philosopher Peter Osborne has called “postconceptual” art. It also raises critical methodological questions for the discipline of art history writ large. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the implications for belief revision of weakening the logic under which belief sets are taken to be closed. A widely held view is that the usual belief revision functions are highly classical, especially in being driven by consistency. We show that, on the contrary, the standard representation theorems still hold for paraconsistent belief revision. Then we give conditions under which consistency is preserved by revisions, and we show that this modelling allows for the gradual revision (...) of inconsistency. (shrink)

Following the tradition of comparing humans with chimpanzees placed under unfavorable conditions, the authors suggest many uniquely human technological abilities. However, chimpanzees use spontaneously tools in nature to achieve many different goals demonstrating technological skills and reasoning contradicting the authors contrast. Chimpanzees and humans develop skills through the experiences faced during their upbringing and neglecting this leads to fake conclusions.

When are soldier enhancements permissible in so far as they affect moral autonomy? This question is answered via the setting out of an important condition for moral autonomy: the capacity agents have for appropriating actions and experiences into a unified morally coherent self-conception.

This paper argues that the technical notion of conditional probability, as given by the ratio analysis, is unsuitable for dealing with our pretheoretical and intuitive understanding of both conditionality and probability. This is an ontological account of conditionals that include an irreducible dispositional connection between the antecedent and consequent conditions and where the conditional has to be treated as an indivisible whole rather than compositional. The relevant type of conditionality is found in some well-defined group of conditional statements. As (...) an alternative, therefore, we briefly offer grounds for what we would call an ontological reading: for both conditionality and conditional probability in general. It is not offered as a fully developed theory of conditionality but can be used, we claim, to explain why calculations according to the RATIO scheme does not coincide with our intuitive notion of conditional probability. What it shows us is that for an understanding of the whole range of conditionals we will need what John Heil (2003), in response to Quine (1953), calls an ontological point of view. (shrink)

An energy condition, in the context of a wide class of spacetime theories, is, crudely speaking, a relation one demands the stress-energy tensor of matter satisfy in order to try to capture the idea that "energy should be positive". The remarkable fact I will discuss in this paper is that such simple, general, almost trivial seeming propositions have profound and far-reaching import for our understanding of the structure of relativistic spacetimes. It is therefore especially surprising when one also learns (...) that we have no clear understanding of the nature of these conditions, what theoretical status they have with respect to fundamental physics, what epistemic status they may have, when we should and should not expect them to be satisfied, and even in many cases how they and their consequences should be interpreted physically. Or so I shall argue, by a detailed analysis of the technical and conceptual character of all the standard conditions used in physics today, including examination of their consequences and the circumstances in which they are believed to be violated. (shrink)

The Borel–Kolmogorov Paradox is typically taken to highlight a tension between our intuition that certain conditional probabilities with respect to probability zero conditioning events are well defined and the mathematical definition of conditional probability by Bayes’ formula, which loses its meaning when the conditioning event has probability zero. We argue in this paper that the theory of conditional expectations is the proper mathematical device to conditionalize and that this theory allows conditionalization with respect to probability zero events. The conditional probabilities (...) on probability zero events in the Borel–Kolmogorov Paradox also can be calculated using conditional expectations. The alleged clash arising from the fact that one obtains different values for the conditional probabilities on probability zero events depending on what conditional expectation one uses to calculate them is resolved by showing that the different conditional probabilities obtained using different conditional expectations cannot be interpreted as calculating in different parametrizations of the conditional probabilities of the same event with respect to the same conditioning conditions. We conclude that there is no clash between the correct intuition about what the conditional probabilities with respect to probability zero events are and the technically proper concept of conditionalization via conditional expectations—the Borel–Kolmogorov Paradox is just a pseudo-paradox. (shrink)

Introduction. The universality of modern technol- ogy testifies to a certain mode of its existence. It manifests itself in the fact that there is practically not a single segment of the modern world, not a single sphere of culture where technology has not spread its influence - direct or indirect / anony- mous. On the basis of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that technology is both a tradition and a logic built into the tradition, and the realiza- (...) tion of a special existential orientation, an embodi- ment of a special kind. The purpose of the study is to reveal whether its essence is connected only with the pragmatic func- tion of technology, or whether there is a special symbolic beginning in technology, which takes technology beyond the scope of rational use. Methods. The authors apply the structuralist method that makes it possible to reveal structures behind the everyday understanding of technology that can generate semantic layers. The structuralist method is complemented by the phenomenological method, since the identified structures constitute the symbolic foundations of technical reality. The phenomenological method makes it possible to reveal the “hidden care” of a person, the target reason for the existence of technology. Scientific novelty of the research. The article reveals the deep meaning of the target cause of the technique. The technical is aimed at overcom- ing natural barriers, creating artificial natures, with its own special logic of existence. The material properties of things allow the permeability and conditionality of all qualitative obstacles. Quantita- tive homogeneity, the permeability of all qualities makes the boundaries between the types of living things conditional. There is no line of demarca- tion not only within life (the theory of evolution is based on this), but also between the living and the non-living. It is possible that there is no boundary between the temporal and the immortal. Results. The desire of mankind to overcome time is embodied in the being of technology. Mankind strives to conquer nature, to overcome all the bar- riers that the natural world continues to put up, in order to bypass natural laws to enter the realm of absolute freedom, which connects with immortal- ity. The created technical things themselves have certain laws for implementing a technical idea and limit technical creativity, but the meaning of technical creation is to overcome any restrictions. Man is a technician, because he is the self-willed transformer of the world. There is a revolutionary charge in technology that changes the world to hu- man request. The technique embodies the struggle of a desperate being with the rejection of his fate, his mortal fate. Conclusions. Despite the fact that science positions itself as rational, sober knowledge, nevertheless, the old dream of overcoming the barrier of death has not gone away. At the present stage, technol- ogy is trying to realize this dream through imple- menting safety, comfort, quality medical care, and an increase in life expectancy. Everything technical is centered on the problem of “life and death”. (shrink)

Curry's paradox for "if.. then.." concerns the paradoxical features of sentences of the form "If this very sentence is true, then 2+2=5". Standard inference principles lead us to the conclusion that such conditionals have true consequents: so, for example, 2+2=5 after all. There has been a lot of technical work done on formal options for blocking Curry paradoxes while only compromising a little on the various central principles of logic and meaning that are under threat. -/- Once we have (...) a sense of the technical options, though, a philosophical choice remains. When dealing with puzzles in the logic of conditionals, a natural place to turn is independently motivated semantic theories of the behaviour of "if... then...". This paper argues that the closest-worlds approach outlined in Nolan 1997 offers a philosophically satisfying reason to deny conditional proof and so block the paradoxical Curry reasoning, and can give the verdict that standard Curry conditionals are false, along with related "contraction conditionals". (shrink)

This article intends to establish a comparison between technical analog objects—which were the objects of the epoch when the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon elaborated his philosophical reflection—and digital devices that emerged in the last few decades of the 1900s. First, I define the main features of Simondon’s technical objects in order to understand what the necessary conditions are for there to be technical progress, which is based on what he called the process of concretization. Then, I analyze (...) the relationship between digital objects—as understood by Yuk Hui—and digital devices that take over from analog objects, without necessarily presenting continuity in an evolutionary process. Finally, I intend to expose the role that both analog objects and digital devices play as mediators with the world in a digital era, and to address the question of technical culture nowadays. (shrink)

According to the dual nature thesis, technical artifacts have a dual nature: they are material objects that have a material base, but also functions that depend on their intentional history, in particular their intended and actual use. In an influential paper, Houkes and Meijers argue that the dual nature thesis does not square well with the seemingly plausible idea that the function of a technological artifact supervenes on its material base. They correctly point out that many versions of the (...) supervenience thesis are unable to account for the following two-way underdetermination condition: “an artefact type, as a functional type, is multiply realizable in material structures or systems, while a given material basis can realize a variety of functions” (Houkes and Meijers 2006, 120). In this paper, I articulate a supervenience thesis that is compatible with the two-way underdetermination condition. (shrink)

Problem: Visions of technology, future scenarios, guiding visions represent imaginations of future states of affairs that play a functional role in processes of technological research, development and innovation—e.g. as a means to create attention, communication, coordination, or for the strategic exertion of influence. Since a couple of years there is a growing attention for such imaginations of futures in politics, the economy, research and the civil society. This trend concerns technology assessment as an observer of these processes and a consultant (...) on the implications of technology and innovation. TA faces increasing demands to assess imaginations of futures that circulate in the present and to participate in shaping these through scenarios or foresights. More than ever, this raises the question, which propositions can be made based on these imaginations by TA and how this can be used in advisory practices. Imaginations of futures are relevant for TA not as predictions but in their significance and effectiveness in the present, which need to be understood and assessed.Contents: This discussion paper outlines how present significance and effects of imagined futures in technological research and innovation processes can be conceived and analyzed. In this paper, all forms of imaginations of technology futures will be called “socio-technical futures” because within them technological developments and social changes are interwoven and inseparably interrelated. In this paper, we discuss why TA should analyze socio-technical futures, how such analyses can grasp the societal conditions that are expressed in the imagined futures and how these become effective in processes of technology development, communication, decision making etc. We raise the question which self-reflexive positioning or possible realignment of TA is needed as a response to its increased concern with assessing and even co-producing socio-technical futures. The latter is often demanded regarding the growing attention by politics and publics to imaginations of futures with wide temporal and spatial reach.Addressee of this paper is the TA community in a broader sense. The aim is to sensitize colleagues for the topic and its challenges, to consolidate discussions and to provide theoretical and methodical suggestions for research in TA and related advisory practices with respect to socio-technical futures. This paper has been originally initiated during the workshop “The present of technological futures-theoretical and methodical challenges for Technology Assessment”, in which all of the paper’s authors participated. The contents of this discussion paper are preliminary results that shall initiate and guide further discussions. (shrink)

Current philosophical theorizing about technical functions is mainly focused on specifying conditions under which agents are justified in ascribing functions to technical artifacts. Yet, assessing the precise explanatory relevance of such function ascriptions is, by and large, a neglected topic in the philosophy of technical artifacts and technical functions. We assess the explanatory utility of ascriptions of technical functions in the following three explanation-seeking contexts: why was artifact x produced?, why does artifact x not have (...) the expected capacity to ϕ?, how does artifact x realize its capacity to ϕ? We argue that while function ascriptions serve a mere heuristic role in the first context, they have substantial explanatory leverage in the second and third context. In addition, we assess the relevance of function ascriptions in the context of engineering redesign. Here, function ascriptions also play a relevant role: they enable normative statements of the sort that component b functions better than component a. We unpack these claims by considering philosophical theories of technical functions, in particular the ICE theory, and engineering work on function ascription and explanation. We close the paper by relating our analysis to current debates on the explanatory power of mechanistic vis-à-vis functional explanations. (shrink)

This systematic review examined studies investigating evaluative conditioning (EC) effects using food stimuli as conditioned stimuli (CS) and body silhouettes as unconditioned stimuli (US). Following PRISMA guidelines, 162 records were identified, of which three studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the final analysis of methodological characteristics and outcomes. The review focused on technical elements (stimulus types, presentation parameters, trial numbers) and functional properties (conditioning effects, extinction patterns) of EC procedures. Analysis revealed consistent evidence for successful conditioning (...) effects, particularly when pairing food images with obese body shapes, resulting in decreased CS ratings post-conditioning (effect sizes ranging from r =.26 to.41). However, studies exhibited considerable methodological heterogeneity in stimulus presentation times (400-7000ms), trial numbers (18-144), and measurement approaches. Key procedural variations included gender representation in US stimuli, CS categorization (single items vs. food categories), and assessment methods (explicit ratings vs. implicit measures). The findings highlight the need for greater methodological standardization in EC research using food-body associations, while suggesting EC's potential utility in modifying food-related attitudes. Future research directions should address gender balance in sampling, standardization of stimulus sources, and investigation of potential mediating mechanisms. The results point to potential relevance for nutrition education and public health contexts, while also underscoring the importance of further research on the effectiveness, stability, and ethical implications of such applications. (shrink)

Powerful technologies labeled “AI”—without sufficient epistemic caution—are already reshaping political and private life, bringing both new dangers and new opportunities for citizen participation. These range from electoral and legislative engagement to the most ambitious form: political co-creation through citizens’ assemblies. Large Language Models (LLMs) could support such processes through moderation, translation, facilitation, summarization, and writing assistance. But this potential remains largely unrealized. The Democratic Commons project takes a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach—from philosophy to computer science—to evaluate LLMs against five proposed democratic (...) principles. At its core, the project is driven by the question of political bias: under what conditions can LLMs be used democratically within forms of citizen participation that are themselves still largely experimental? Addressing these socio-technical questions requires grounding in political theory and, more broadly, in philosophy—disciplines that provide the normative frameworks without which the democratic evaluation of AI systems cannot be meaningfully conducted. (shrink)

The human-centered AI approach posits a future in which the work done by humans and machines will become ever more interactive and integrated. This article takes human-centered AI one step further. It argues that the integration of human and machine intelligence is achievable only if human organizations—not just individual human workers—are kept “in the loop.” We support this argument with evidence of two case studies in the area of predictive maintenance, by which we show how organizational practices are needed and (...) shape the use of AI/ML. Specifically, organizational processes and outputs such as decision-making workflows, etc. directly influence how AI/ML affects the workplace, and they are crucial for answering our first and second research questions, which address the pre-conditions for keeping humans in the loop and for supporting continuous and reliable functioning of AI-based socio-technical processes. From the empirical cases, we extrapolate a concept of “keeping the organization in the loop” that integrates four different kinds of loops: AI use, AI customization, AI-supported original tasks, and taking contextual changes into account. The analysis culminates in a systematic framework of keeping the organization in the loop look based on interacting organizational practices. (shrink)

The age-old debate about the relation between science and society has, in the last two decades, materialized in novel forms at many universities. In this article, we follow the reconfiguration of relevance at one institute of higher education that aspires to become an impact-driven university. We employ a socio-technical instrumentation perspective to this institutional transformation so that we can follow how relevance is being enacted in terms of impact at different organizational levels. To grasp the links between organizational changes (...) and the conditions for academic practices, we analyze three policy instruments in-the-making and in-use: impact narratives as novel evaluation tool, the creation of impact profiles as part of human resource policy and new data infrastructures to monitor impact on the sustainable development goals. We investigate their problematizations and imaginaries through qualitative methods, namely document analysis and semi-structured interviews with researchers at various career levels and faculties at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Through the cases, we analyze how these new impact-oriented instruments open up or close down opportunities for academic practices. Our observations show that the reconfiguration of relevance as impact implies the advancement of a strategic approach to relevance and to academic work and institutions more generally. Ultimately, the site-specific case also includes bottom-up problematizations of impact that lead us to reflect on the limitations of a policy instrument approach and stress the importance of addressing the politics of the social relations of ‘relevant’ scientific work. (shrink)

In his recent paper, Metcalf (2026) argues that, at least in the humanities, widespread AI-generated articles are likely to result in a kind of erosion of the knowledge base of an institution or system. Building on this framework of technical incrementalism, this paper complements it with the commodification of the image of knowledge, the integration of spectacles, and Guy Debord’s algorithms to map two poles of LLM use in scientific authorship, from minimal technical assistance to the complete delegation (...) of the writing process to machines. The massive use of LLMs encourages the production of technical, homogenous, and innovation-poor scholarly work, an undeniable common condition today. Behind this, academic economic pressures and publication incentive systems exacerbate this, particularly in philosophy and the humanities. Therefore, solutions to this problem cannot stop at the individual level. Possible long-term solutions include structural changes to the scientific publishing ecosystem, assessments based on contributions to knowledge, and fair incentive systems. (shrink)

PurposeInformation and communications technologies (ICTs) have transformed the lives of many people around the world, yet billions remain unconnected. While many initiatives attempt to “connect the unconnected,” initiatives focused on access and skills-development alone will still fall short. Based on the authors’ experience with the SolarSPELL initiative, this study aims to propose using the concept of socio-technical awareness as a step forward in conceptualizing a more accurate picture of capabilities necessary to enable people to make meaningful use of the (...) internet.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses an integrative literature review for the ideas related to the digital divide, digital inclusion and digital literacies, as well as the applied work of the authors in the SolarSPELL initiative, to develop the concept of socio-technical awareness, which is presented as a method for understanding empowered, meaningful internet use.FindingsThe argument is made that access, skills- and literacy-development are necessary but insufficient conditions for meaningful ICTs use. Accordingly, a third concept, socio-technical awareness, is introduced, and the case is made for including this concept in both application and measurement of meaningful use of ICTs.Practical implicationsThe design of digital inclusion initiatives should focus on increasing socio-technical awareness to empower users to make meaningful use of digital technologies.Originality/valueTaking a step further than most assessments of the digital divide or digital inclusion, this study proposes that to achieve meaningful internet use, people need access, requisite skills development and socio-technical awareness, to be able to make informed, empowered decisions about ICT use. (shrink)

The decolonial theory understands that Western Modernity keeps imposing itself through a triple mutually reinforcing and shaping imprisonment: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of being. Technical design has an essential role in either maintaining or overcoming coloniality. In this article, two main approaches to decolonizing the technical design are presented. First is Yuk Hui’s and Ahmed Ansari’s proposals that, revisiting or recovering the different histories and philosophies of technology produced by humankind, intend to decolonize the (...) minds of philosophers and engineers/architects/designers as a pre-condition for such decolonial designs to take place. I call them top-down approaches. Second is some technical design initiatives that, being developed alongside marginalized/subalternate people, intend to co-construct decolonial sociotechnical solutions through a committed, decolonizing, and careful dialog of knowledge. I call them bottom-up approaches. Once that is done, the article’s second half derives ontological, epistemological, and political consequences from the conjugation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Such consequences challenge some established or not yet entirely overcome understandings in the philosophy of technology and, in so doing, are meant to represent some steps in PT’s decolonization. Even though both top-down and bottom-up approaches are considered, the article’s main contributions are associated with decolonial technical design practices, whose methodologies and outcomes are important study cases for PT and whose practitioners can be taken as inspiring examples for philosophers who want to decolonize/enlarge PT or make it decolonial. (shrink)

How do technologies that are too complex for any one individual to produce arise and persist in human populations? Contra prevailing views focusing on social learning, Osiurak and Reynaud argue that the primary driver for cumulative technological culture is our ability for technical reasoning. Whilst sympathetic to their overall position, we argue that two specific aspects of their account are implausible: first, that technical reasoning is unique to humans; and second, that technical reasoning is a necessary (...) class='Hi'>condition for the production of cumulative technological culture. We then present our own view, which keeps technical reasoning at the forefront but jettisons these conditions. This produces an account of cumulative technological culture that maintains an important role for technical reasoning, whilst being more evolutionarily plausible. (shrink)

The article discusses the technical image, a central concept in Vilém Flusser’s later main work Into the Universe of Technical Images (1985a). After identifying its various dimensions, the analysis frames the concept as an amalgamation of disciplines, theories, and artistic practices the cultural philosopher Flusser explored during the 1960s and especially the 1970s. In particular, the field of information aesthetics developed by Max Bense and Abraham A. Moles, among others, as well as artistic video practices in France and (...) the United States played an important role in both Flusser’s biography and the formation of his technical image concept. At the same time, in Flusser’s cultural philosophy the technical image is the condition and result of a new kind of human imagination, which in this paper is specified as ‘projective imagination’. (shrink)

How does the use of military drones affect the legal, political, and moral responsibility of different actors involved in their deployment and design? This volume offers a fresh contribution to the ethics of drone warfare by providing, for the first time, a systematic interdisciplinary discussion of different responsibility issues raised by military drones. The book discusses four main sets of questions: First, from a legal point of view, we analyse the ways in which the use of drones makes the attribution (...) of criminal responsibility to individuals for war crimes more complicated and what adjustments may be required in international criminal law and in military practices to avoid ’responsibility gaps’ in warfare. From a moral and political perspective, the volume looks at the conditions under which the use of military drones by states is impermissible, permissible, or even obligatory and what the responsibilities of a state in the use of drones towards both its citizens and potential targets are. From a socio-technical perspective, what kind of new human machine interaction might drones bring and which new kinds of shared agency and responsibility? Finally, we ask how the use of drones changes our conception of agency and responsibility. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in ethics and to those in law, politics and the military involved in the design, deployment and evaluation of military drones. (shrink)

Pediatric neurological conditions require specialized devices to address the dynamic physiological and neurological changes from neonates to adolescents. Challenges in developing and regulating these devices arise due to limited pediatric-specific clinical data, high R&D costs, and adult-focused regulatory frameworks. These barriers hinder timely access to essential technologies for children. To systematically review the development, regulation, and ethical considerations of pediatric neurological devices. The study aims to identify challenges, propose adaptive solutions, and emphasize the need for collaboration among stakeholders to foster (...) innovation and improve health outcomes. A systematic review adhering to PRISMA guidelines analyzed ethical, regulatory, and technical frameworks for pediatric neurological devices. The study included 90 sources, comprising peer-reviewed articles, regulatory guidelines, and expert panel insights. Data were sourced from databases like Scopus and PubMed, focusing on publications between 2016 and 2024. Key barriers identified include a lack of pediatric-specific clinical trials, insufficient long-term safety data, and limited market incentives. Ethical complexities such as informed consent, device calibration, and managing unrealistic expectations further complicate device development. The review highlights the potential of adaptive trial designs, real-world evidence, AI, and digital health platforms in expediting device approval and ensuring safety. Developing pediatric neurological devices demands a multidisciplinary approach to overcome ethical, regulatory, and technical challenges. Recommendations include integrating adaptive regulatory frameworks, enhancing pediatric-specific R&D tax credits, employing AI-driven maintenance models, and fostering international collaboration. These strategies aim to balance innovation with safety, ensuring equitable access to effective devices for children globally. (shrink)

Across the globe, cities, states, and nations are moving forward with implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for policing and fraud detection, motivated by an optimistic view that technology can improve the functioning of government. Yet, their implementations have sometimes led to disastrous outcomes for citizens, leading many to view these technologies with deep skepticism. We bridge this divide by conducting a multi-disciplinary systematic literature review (n = 157) focusing on specific conditions for benefits and risks associated with the (...) implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in predictive policing and fraud detection and prevention. We find that the social science literature generally and, more specifically, the field of Public Administration focuses on the risks of algorithmic technology, and we identify conditions of risks, such as when algorithmic systems are designed with a model of threat. The engineering literature instead focuses on potential benefits, and we identify conditions of benefits, including alignment with legal and policy objectives. We integrate these conditions into a socio-technical governance framework that conceptualizes technical system quality, human–technology interaction, and institutional context as interacting mechanisms shaping both decision outcomes and institutional legitimacy. This framework highlights the importance of closer collaboration between data scientists and social scientists to design and implement policing and fraud detection systems that better align with public and societal values. (shrink)