Abstract
This paper would like to analyze the phenomena of technology-aided learning among students and teachers by leveraging Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Heideggerian readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand, which explains existential modes of using equipment, and Gadamerian fusion of horizons indicating the expansion of understanding, have been widely discussed, but seldom linked in one philosophical discussion. This paper presents two main views upon discussing the Heideggerian and Gadamerian basic ideas of their philosophies. Firstly, repetitive practice of the use of technological Things as present-at-hand to increase familiarity as being increasingly ready-to-hand facilitates the fusion of horizons between users as Dasein and technology with a horizon of its own usefulness. Secondly, technological tools are used as ready-to-hand with familiarity in support of theoretical and critical judgement and observation of technological Things and thematic learning materials as present-at-hand “for-the-sake-of” teaching and learning. The fusion of horizons between students as Dasein, and, learning materials and ultimately teachers, will thus be enabled by the cooperation between the two modes. The fusion of horizons between users and technology is found greatly contributing to the fusion of horizons between instructors and students.
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Notes
- 1.
Such pre-understanding is prior to and more fundamental to all later thematic and theoretical understanding required to examine an external object in front of Dasein as an observer, which is present-at-hand understanding—a derivative of the primary primordial understanding (which will be discussed below) (Heidegger, 1996: 134).
- 2.
This is attested in: “The less we just stare at the thing called hammer and the more actively we use it, the more original our relation to it becomes and the more undisguisedly it is encountered as what it is, as a useful thing” (Heidegger, 1996: 69).
- 3.
“[……]Heidegger rejects the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy in both its subjective and objective garb. He does not see the modern shift in emphasis away from res cogitans to res extensa as any more tenable, or less Cartesian, for that matter, than the traditional emphasis on a mental reality. Thus, Heidegger seeks to get beyond the entire dichotomy, and aims at rehabilitating the subjective perspective without resorting to the res cogitans” (Overenget, 1995: 432).
- 4.
This is attested in “Tradition is not simply a precondition into which we come, but we produce it ourselves, inasmuch as we understand, participate in the evolution of tradition and hence further determine ourselves. Thus the circle of understanding is not a ‘methodological’ circle, but describes an ontological structural element in understanding” (Gadamer, 1982: 261).
- 5.
This is attested in “Hence the horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present in itself than there are historical horizons which have to be acquired. Rather, understanding is always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves” (Gadamer, 1997: 306).
- 6.
Heidegger (2001: 194) assumed that “any interpretation which is to contribute understanding, must already have understood what to be interpreted” and (2001: 191–192) that “interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us”. It is because of one’s fore-structure that consists of three components, namely fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, as in “Interpretation is grounded in something we have in advance—a fore-having. As the appropriation of understanding, the interpretation operates in Being towards a totality of involvements which is already understood [……] something we have in advance […….] a fore-sight [……] something grasp in advance [……] a fore-conception” (Heidegger, 2001: 191). Fore-having refers to “something we have in advance”, that is “already understood” (tacitly and implicitly) but not something that “need[s] to be grasped explicitly by a thematic interpretation” (SZ: 150/191). For instance, in the understanding of the ready-to-hand, the fore-having is the contextual referential totality of involvement of the connections and functional relationships among a series of tools to be used (SZ: 150/191). Fore-sight refers to the unveiling that “is always done under the guidance of a point of view, which fixes that with regard to which what is understood to be interpreted” (SZ: 150/191), and fore-sight “does so with a view to a definite way in which this can be interpreted” (SZ: 150/191). In other words, fore-sight denotes a “getting-closer-to-the-core” approach, directions and perspectives of interpreting a thing with a more specific focus point so that the structure of “as” (as in a hammer as “a functional hammer-being used to cut something off” now to me in this situation) can later be brought to the surface more explicitly and clearly (Kinneavy, 1987: 4–5). Fore-conception refers to the process that “involves articulating the entity that we are interpreting with certain concepts” (Leung, 2012: 98) and that “the interpretation has already decided for a definite way of conceiving it, either with finality or with reservation” (SZ: 150/191). In order words, for-conception refers to the conceptual framework that more explicitly and clearly articulates the as-which of interpretation (as is a hammer as explicitly as “a functional hammer-being used to cut something off”) and connects it with other as-whiches (a nail in front of me as “a thing being plunked down on or out of” a fence, with the hammer nearby) (Kinneavy, 1987: 5–6).
SZ: Sein und Zeit, 17. Auflage (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993); Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinsion (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
- 7.
Gadamer’s “prejudices” are related to Heideggerian “fore-structures” in that Gadamer takes over the concepts of fore-structures from Heidegger by reconceptualizing them so that prejudices, to Gadamer, are by no means a negative expression concerning discriminations and biases, but a neutralized term which denotes people’s pre-judgement when having an encounter with a thing or a text and people’s received assumptions and current horizons of their interpretation are to be challenged, and thus prejudices are found to be of assistance in achieving growing legitimate understanding (Abhik & Oludaja, 2011: 37; Schmidt, 2006).
- 8.
This is attested in: “Hermeneutic reflection and determination of one’s own present life interpretation calls for the unfolding of one’s ‘effective-historical’ consciousness” (Herda, 1999: 63).
- 9.
As Blattner (2006) suggests, for unreadiness-to-hand, users are still using an item to complete a task for his/her purpose fulfilment, but perhaps in a relatively laborious and exhausting way, as “we can no longer ‘see through’ the tool to focus on the task; instead, we must explicitly attend to the unready-to-hand object that the tool has turned into” while Heidegger’s third way of experiencing the world is considered as presence-at-hand (Dotov et al., 2010).
- 10.
This is attested in Abergel (2020)’s suggestion on students’ “absorption in its world of concern and the “They” [as teachers], the shared, public interpretations that govern the intelligibility of its world”.
- 11.
Students’ tendency towards listening to teachers as “The They” is understandable since the latter’s status and power have been dominant in the education sector and thus are difficult to be challenged. Therefore, students’ listening and obedience allow themselves to ease the pressure of confronting teachers’ intellect and of paying a huge cost of being authentic learners and of realizing the possibilities in their own decisions (Schmidt, 2006: 68; Wrathall, 2013: 12–18).
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Lau, HY.J. (2024). Technology-Aided Learning at the Intersection of Presence-At-Hand and Readiness-To-Hand and the Fusion of Horizons Among Students, Technology and Teachers. In: Ma, W.W.K. (eds) Engaged Learning and Innovative Teaching in Higher Education. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-2171-9_15
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