Abstract
In Technology and the Lifeworld (1990), Don Ihde advances what he calls “formalisms” for the ways in which we experience or relate to technology. In this article, I seek to clarify the grammar of Ihde’s formalisms. Ihde’s formalisms have not been the focus of scrutiny. Rather, they have largely been received in the literature as merely aphoristic or epigrammatical devices serving to clarify what can be explained in prose. My hypothesis is that Ihde’s formalisms do not merely serve an epigrammatical function but rather admit of a generative grammar that extends his postphenomenological framework. I propose a notation that adheres to six rules of syntax that can be derived from Ihde’s framework. I show that the proposed notation makes explicit the inter-relations among hidden dimensions of human–technology relations. Relying on my notation, I also suggest that the so-called cyborg turn is actually a turn away from the unharnessed syntax of Ihde’s formalisms.
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17 August 2019
The original version of this article unfortunately contains an incorrect sentence.
Notes
A foundational text, Technology and the Lifeworld (hereinafter abbreviated as Lifeworld or TL), will serve as the touchstone for this article.
Ihde did not formalize background relations in Lifeworld. I will set aside background relations for another occasion.
As far as I know, attempts to extend Ihde’s framework are modifications of his theory.
For example, Verbeek (2008) proposes the notations “human → (technology → world)” and “(human/technology) → world” to indicate what he calls “composite intentionality” and “hybrid intentionality,” respectively; Coeckelbergh (2015) proposes, inter alia, “humans–(language–technology)–world” to signify how the language of technology mediates our relation to the world; Rosenberger and Verbeek (2015) propose “I ↔ Technology/World” to signify what they call “reflexive intentionality”; Wellner (2017) proposes “I-media-world” to refer to relations between humans and digital media; Wiltse (2014) proposes “I → ([trace | substrate] → world)” to refer to digital material mediation.
I use the phrase “inherent ambiguity” to distinguish from what Ihde describes as an “essential ambiguity” of a “transformational structure [e.g., magnification/reduction structure]” that allows technologies to do more than merely replicate our bodily experience (TL: 76).
This more restricted conception of enigmas as occurrent, i.e., opacity-as-technical-problem, is insufficiently appreciated in the literature.
The notational inseparability of the hyphen and parentheses is corroborated by the provenance of the hyphen. The hyphen was originally a part of the arrow (or “correlation line”) that has been typographically cut off, as it were, by the superscribed technology (or “machine”) term and the parentheses (Ihde 1975: 272).
For example, Ihde’s notation for alterity relations is reproduced in Verbeek (2008) and Søraker (2012) as “human → technology (− world)”; in Nørskov (2015) as “I → technology—(world)”; and in Lucas Introna’s (2017) entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “I-technology-[world].”
This clause should be further qualified. The parenthesis in Ihde’s original formalism for alterity relations indicates an optionality. What is optional is “a relation through the technology to the world” (TL: 107). However, Ihde writes, “it might well be expected that the usefulness of any technology will necessarily entail just such a referentiality” (TL: 107, emphasis in original). The scope of my argument may be limited to technologies that are useful—in Ihde’s sense of the term. And the syntax advanced in this article may be applicable to alterity relations that are based on technological relations to the world. So, for the purposes of this article, Ihde’s formalism for alterity relations can be simplified as follows:
$$ \mathrm{human}\to \mathrm{technology}--\mathrm{world} $$As such, the noted clause admits of a stronger formulation that both hyphens in Ihde’s formalism do not occur within a parenthetical; a fortiori, Ihde’s notation can be construed as an abbreviation.
The machine embodiment was based on a pulley system powered by a pressurized vessel heated by a fire (Papadopoulos 2007). The fire caused the vessel to pump water into containers that functioned as counter-weights. So, when a fire was started at the altar, the temple doors opened as if by some mysterious powers.
Philon’s oil lamp automatically maintained the level of oil within a reservoir. Instead of a person continually monitoring the level of the oil and filling the lamp when necessary, material forces stand in the place of human agency. An ingenious design that takes advantage of atmospheric pressure (Mayr 1970), the lamp’s structure for sensing the oil level—a machine hermeneutics—served also as the means—a machine embodiment—for replenishing the oil.
The substitution of technological intentionality for human intentionality may be observed even in alterity relations that are not based on technological relations to the world. See supra note 10. For example, Ihde recognizes that alterity relations emerging from computer technologies “may fail[] quite strongly to mimic bodily incarnations [but may] nevertheless display a quasi-otherness within the limits of linguistics … its sources lie opaquely with other humans …” (TL: 106).
Pursuing a similar idea that ultimately departs from Ihde’s formalisms, Nørskov writes “as soon as we accept notions like technological intentionality, we might wonder about all kinds of relations and the nature of them. For instance: (technology→technology)→world or technology→(technology→human) relations, etc.” (2015: 205, emphasis in original).
The preservation of enigma positions is a concern among commentators who worry that attempts to extend Ihde’s formalisms depart excessively from his original notation. For example, concerning Verbeek’s proposed notation for “composite relations” (see supra note 5), Søraker writes, “[t]here seems, however, as if there should be an enigma position between technology and world in the composite relation” (2012: 502).
The notion of levels of abstraction is a well-established and widely employed concept. For example, Learned Hand, in Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation, 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930), formulated the “abstraction test” to ascertain whether ideas are merged with their expressions for the purposes of determining copyright infringement.
Such dimensions have been intimated in the literature. For example, Søraker’s distinction between intravirtual and extravirtual effects, I think, is an attempt to explicate the various dimensions of human–technology relations (in the virtual reality context) that, he argues, cannot be captured by Ihde’s formalisms (2012: 504–505). However, as far as I know, there have been no attempts to formalize these dimensions.
This conclusion directly contravenes Nørskov’s self-professed modification of Ihde’s theory. Nørskov’s modification is based on the assumption that alterity relations can be reduced to hermeneutic and embodiment relations (Nørskov 2015: 198). However, as explicated in Sects. 3.1–3.2, Ihde’s theoretical framework holds that alterity relations do not reduce to these human–technology relations but rather give rise to these relations.
For example, perhaps with something like the structure denoted by (25) in mind, Michelfelder observes that “it is difficult to see how it would be possible to relate to the same technology simultaneously with both forms of relations [i.e., embodiment and hermeneutic relations] without one interfering with the other and so resulting in distracted attention” (Michelfelder 2015: 239).
Other commentators are skeptical about “cyborg intentionality” as a new kind of human-technology relation that is phenomenologically distinct from the mediated relations originally advanced by Ihde. For instance, Rosenberger “maintain[s] that ultimately implantations should be understood as a subclass of embodiment relations, and not as a distinct and new relation” (2015: 137).
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The original version of this article was revised: The original version of this article unfortunately contains an incorrect sentence.
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Luan, S.T. The Hidden Dimensions of Human–Technology Relations. Philos. Technol. 33, 141–165 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-019-00349-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-019-00349-8