Our last seminary: Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology (and others)

Yesterday we held the seminary we announced about Martin Heidegger. It is possible it would be one

of the last readings we make this course because we have to focus on our papers and congress (next post will be about some very good news we have about it!). 

By the way, the last read we will make is about Giorgio Agamben (we will post it soon). 

For this session, we read "The Question Concerning Technology", "Science and Meditation" and "The thing". Here the seminary about Heidegger with the most interesting comments:

Heidegger introduces the difference between the ontic and the ontological (being): between the object and its essence. The true essence of each object is different from the object itself.

Essence of technology -> to become the world existences: What makes the technique is to convert everything that exists in the world in existences. Existences in Spanish means the existence of something, but also the amount of one thing we have stored (stock).

What is relevant is whether, originally, the title was "the question of technique" or "the question after the technique." (In English is the Question Concerning Technology, but in Spanish is more complex to understand this preposition).

At the end of the text, the technique can be a hazard if it becomes all in existences (including ourselves and if we don't make anymore questions), but we can also save us. The questions are necessary because if we fall into the trap that we can control the world and we know everything, we are abandoning our possibility of freedom, and freedom is the existential condition of life itself. Freedom is achieved precisely asking the questions because them give us the possibility to question how things are.

Freedom is the right question for the unveiling. We are free when we asked for the essence of things, not its ontological being. The thingness of the thing is co-link, to join (the pitcher joins the cuaternity itself, as connections heaven and earth, technical and object, etc).

The thingness of the thing is coligar, join (the jar joins the cuaternidad itself, as connections between heaven and earth, technics and object, etc). Interest in the concept of obstancy. This way of being present for the Romans is called obstancy.

About the sentence "The essence of science is that it is the theory of the real" (p. 34):

-Science: Contemporary Science, embedded from poetry and classical Greek art.

-Real: in Greece: The real fills the region of the effective, that which works. Work means doing (by man or nature), but also bring (a presence) and pro-duce. Reality therefore is what brings-there-front (dassein); the reality, that brought-there-before, in un-hidden and remains unconcealed. Later in Rome, the real becomes result (that is, that which precedes a cause that caused this result is reality) that follows from an act: real is what has been achieved (p. 36). It this way, the real is true, sure, what we take for granted; apparently as mere opposition or mere opinion (but still present in some different way than in Greece. This way of being present for the Romans call obstancia).

-Theory: in Greece, to watch the aspect under which the present appears. Through this vision, to stay fit him watching (p. 37), is the respectful attention to the state of unconcealment of the present, the "the look that selther the truth ". In Modernity: It comes from Rome with contemplatio: separate, divide. The theory is an elaboration of the real; but also prevail however what the presence (as theory Science, provokes the real itself in view of its obstancia). It is a represent that makes sure everything real in your prosecutable obstancy (represent = to keep this in any particular way and no other). Therefore, modern science as a theory of reality, it is not obvious.

Gestell in Heidegger structure site, but now is translated as disposition, the same translation of "agencement" in Deleuze. In Bourdieu so does the habit, which is also a translation available. It is what makes the bring-there-before (brought from far away).

The essence is not infinite, is the en-durance (the recurring endure), which remains when we reveal the essence. Each essence reveals something of the hidden. For example, today, what reveals a PC or a Mac? Heidegger focuses on objects that have a very long duration in history (a pitcher, art ...) but not in recent-creation objects.

In Heidegger, we are caught in classical ontology, he tries to break it but he still stayy within it because his question is the classic question of being. However, in other philosophers focus on the becoming or the difference left the classical ontology. In Heidegger, there is always an essence that remains (in the first computer, in a normallaptop and in a brand-new mac. The Rhine river does not change by putting a dam or a mill. Deleuze says that what we call essence is changing, the eternal return never brings to the same (in the line of Heraclitus). The Rhine river changes by putting a dam or a mill.

Photo Credit: Alex Brown

Our papers for the 4S/EASST Congress. Modes of Existence

With this post we start a serie of publications where we want to show the short abstract about our several contributions to the 4S/EASST Congress (the biggest STS congress around the world), so you could read the topic about our submissions (all of them are in review process so finally,  they could be not accepted). By the way, you can see our track status here.

Today, we show the last one, titled: "Scenarios as modes of existence in knowledge about biological threats"

Scenarios to think biological threats are modes of existence. They are truth-making procedure. So, they operate building states of exception; they produce images of exception and; life is considered the subject and the object of its monitoring. Ebola pandemics will be our empirical work.


Photo Credit: Jeremy Brooks

Ontological Turn report: Enacment, Agency and others

Enactment concept: it is difficult to translate into Spanish (our daily-use language). It is frecuently translated to act, but it is not exactly. In the legal field it is to enact, but it is translated as to constitute.

The STS have an inquiry about knowledge (how to know better or if a concrete knowledge  is true or false). It would be epistemology. STS then, turns to ontology: how one thing has become what it is, from an  empirical and descriptive view, as anthropologists work, in a very micro-fields and issues.

In the STS is a profound undermining of the taken for granted, "there is nothing qualitatively special on the scientifical practices who give them a real plus to the truth they offer".

(socio)Constructionism vs STS: the ontological turn in STS is not perspectivist. Constructionism silent on ontology, because there are different constructions; Instead, STS accept that there are multiple, changing and poor realities, but STS says that objects are created in practices, and these practices are worth reality, they are real. In the STS, the context idea is rejected: there is only the context in action: according as we speak, we create our context, and may be even materials around the object we're talking may not be part of our context and probably things that are very distant would be part of this temporal-and-poor context. Thus, there are practices and no contexts: as we speak, we connect with other elements, and in this way, we are going opening and contracting the network.

When can we consider that the actor-network has reality or is "closed" our particular actant? by the "Cutting the network" concept. When the process we're working is over due to their idiosyncrasical features. It can be anytime, unexpectedly and it can remain precarious.

Ontology, which is apparently a theoretical and a dense concept, STS make it an empirical concept.

Agency, translation and enactment are three different concepts.

Photo Credit: France Bleu

Bruno Latour seminary: New concepts and thoughts

Previous considerations:

1) The actor-network is only one mode of existence among many others.

2) Diplomacy: The way to do that we need now is the diplomat. Drawing on the etymology of diplomacy (bridge builder, you have to negotiate, everything has the same value, we must articulate intelligibility conditions ...). Upon entering the Anthropocene era, you have to link it with Gaia. The agency would be a mediator between the Anthropocene and Gaia.

Tanner 1:

The Agency is not a will or an internal capacity: it is a record of actions. My agency is the record of what I do, the path of what I do; from effects to causes, and not vice versa. To define an agency we make a list, a network.

At the moment that an object is shaped (eg quasar.), All these people transformed signals showed on a display into a quasar, "That is a quasar." It is credited with a value of externality by implementing some technologies which we think is external and that it has always been there; this is the metamorphic zone.

Tanner 2:

Anthropocene: the moment which the human is a tectonic or geological force that can fight face to face lwith nature, at the same level (as planetary boundaries); is a new stage for the social sciences.

Here, we could be confusing Gaia with God, with some global or abstract. But nothing further, Gaia is a reading of Gabriel Tarde applied to nature.

Debate 2-2:

Why capitalism has survived so long despite the criticism it has always been subjected? One answer has to do with the ANT vision:  as a global being, capitalism is a mot d'ordre (empty of meaning). The strength of capitalism is his way to extract value or goodwill from many places and different ways, adapting to all in their micro-level. Thus, capitalism lands in a thousand different ways, and those details is what gives strength to capitalism.

The market is previous to capitalism (the trade is much earlier), but the first one is trapped by capitalism in a very specific way.

Capitalism: a "peaceful" method of generating wealth, moving wealth (goodwill). A capitalist doesn't purchase 20 yachts (in the Middle Ages, wealth was achieved by accumulation). The capitalist is the one who moves wealth to generate more wealth.

The global does not exist, it is articulated by operators (Internet, ozone ...). Capitalism is another operator that articulates the global on the Anthropocene time.

Institution in ANT: The actor-network create many mechanisms to stop to being a precarious actor-network, and thus survive; to be more solidified (the actor-network is always precarious, fragile, unstable). The actor-network is always in a process that allows it to survive. Thus, capitalism has created this sense of original nature (the first nature in Latour). It is a very very armored institution. Ontologically, macro or a large object is merely the sum or combination of micro elements (in the Gabriel Tarde's sense).

Harlequin coat: The Harlequin layer is made of pieces, but overall you see it as a whole, but it is composed of pieces.

Metrology: how big or long are the rails that are put into circulation by the knowledge that a scientific of technological group create (throughout translation processes). The more associated and bigger is your metrology, the freer and more power you are; and also more able you are to disconnect from all networks, linkages and partnerships.

Body in ANT: an interface, my body is a mediator as well. The body is not a beginning neither an end, it's a bridge, it is a intermediate step crossed by a lot of elements. You can be the beginning and the end at the same time in a particular mediation-process.

Photo Credit: Geralt