Technology, Knowledge, and Human Life

(Your) possible definitions of technology: technology is…

• use of things for a purpose
• make things more convenient, faster
• resource for some purpose
• the use of tools or methods to some end. But: Some animals use tools and techniques—do they use technology?
• applied science—τεχνολογία –τέχνη +λογος (Technik, Technologie). But: was there no technology before science?
• a characteristic of humans – language, stone tools 2.6? mil. years, fire 1? mil years.
• transformation or manipulation of nature. But what about e.g. information technology?
• symbol manipulation and a way of thinking
• all of the above, with due qualification

What is human life, and what is its relation to technology and knowledge?

• extension of the use of tools by apes—modified stones, weapons, fire, agriculture, navigation, combustion engines, nuclear technology, information technology, biotechnology…
• uses of technology for human life: survival, convenience, efficiency, security, storage and exchange of thoughts and information, organization…
• capacity for abstract thought and communication through language (a technology?)
• ζῷον λογικόν (zoon logikon)—animal rationale—rational animal
• homo sapiens (in the 10ᵗʰ edition of Linnæus’ Systema Naturæ from 1758)—knowledge
• homo faber
  “If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.” (Henri Bergson 1907, p. 139)
  Also: Max Scheler 1928, Hannah Arendt 1958—craft
• all of this is necessarily one-sided

Some basic relations

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

• Ἀριστοτέλης (384–322 BCE)
• 10 influential books, questions about authenticity
• physics, metaphysics, politics, ethics
• we should strive for the intermediate
• εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia): e.g. happiness—end in itself
• ἀρετή (aretē): excellence—virtue ethics
• πρᾶξις (praxis): e.g. rational action, conduct

the soul (πσυχἠ)

• Περἱ Πσuχης—“De Anima”—“On the Vital Principle” (psycho-logy)
• the form, or essence of a living thing
• only one part of the soul can exist without the body: scientific/theoretical part
• not a distinct substance from the body that it is in the notion of a body without a soul, or a soul in the wrong kind of body, is unintelligible

three things in the soul which control action and truth:

1. αἴσθησις—aisthesis—sensation (no share in πρᾶξις (praxis))
2. νοῦς—nous—reason
3. ὄρεξις—orexis—desire

“The origin of action–its efficient, not its final cause–is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without reason and intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character. Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is practical […]”
(Nicomachean Ethics 1139a32 (VI.2))

parts of the soul

1. rational
   1. scientific— (contemplates invariable things, knowing that)
   2. calculative (contemplates variable things, know-how)
      1. technical—τἐχνη (technē)
      2. prudential—φρόνησις (phronésis)
2. irrational

Is, under Aristotle’s view, science necessary for technical reasoning? Does this fit technology today?

“ἀμφοτέρων δὴ τῶν νοητικῶν μορίων ἀλήθεια τὸ ἔργον.”
“The work of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth.”
(Nicomachean Ethics, 1139b)

ἀ-λήθεια

5 dispositions (ἕξις) in virtue of which the soul possesses truth

ἕξις (hexis): e.g. state, disposition, active condition of the soul of an zoon logicon (not in either vegetative or sensitive soul)

1. technē (τέχνη)—art—poiesis, ecstasis (έκ-στασις) → production
2. epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη): science/scientific knowledge → theoria (θεωρία)
3. phronēsis (φρόνησις)—practical wisdom – praxis (πρᾶξις) → truth in relation to correct desire
4. sophia (σοφία)—(philosophical) wisdom
5. nous (νοῦς)—reason, understanding

two ways of using calculative reason:

1. acting (combination of character and intellect. Reasoning according to human goods. The end lies in the action itself.)
2. making (technē, variable (contingent). The end is the product.)

technē for Aristotle

1. making, not acting: the value lies in the result (not in the action itself)
2. close to theory and science (epistēmē), but with a practical (not a theoretical) purpose
3. concerned with what is good and bad for a particular purpose
4. concerned with coming into being, bringing into existence
5. does so contingently (not with necessity) and artificially (not naturally)
6. teachable independent from experience
7. origin is the maker

substance (ουσια)

• Democritus: reality consists out of atoms and void (matter). Sensible qualities are not fundamental:
  

  “νόμωι γλυκύ, [καὶ] νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῇ δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν“ (Democritus, Fragment 9, in: Hermann Diels 1952 Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Griechisch und Deutsch, p. 139.)
  “By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colored; but in reality there are atoms and void.”

• Plato: Forms are real (ideas), empirical reality derived
• Aristotle: hylomorphism (ὑλο + μορφή), substance-accident

the four elements

• Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle…
• distinction between fundamental and derived elements
• due to the combination of two pairs of opposites (“primary qualities”)

1. fire: hot + dry
2. air: hot + moist
3. water: cold + moist
4. earth: cold + dry

Paper due 7/11

choose one out of these three prompts:

1. In how far does the Galilean picture of the world merely appeal to technē in Aristotle’s sense? Do you think that Galileo, with his new concept of science, reduces the Aristotelian concept of epistēmē to a clever know-how?
2. Explain the consequences of Galileo’s mathematical account of nature for the concept of color. How does he explain that there is a difference between experiences of colors and experiences of shapes, and how can the difference be explained as a difference in the applicability of a technique?
3. Explain why Husserl thinks that “‘technization’” leads to the “emptying of the meaning of mathematical natural science.”

Please upload to eCommons until 11:59 p.m.

Aristotle’s common and proper sensibles

1. 1. common sensibles (αἰθητά κοινά)
      • experienceable with different senses
      • e.g. motion, rest, shape, magnitude, unity
   2. proper sensibles (αἰσθητά ἴδια)
      • experienceable with one sense only
      • e.g. warmth, color, taste, smell, sound

(cp. De Anima 425a16 (III.1))

Galileo Galilei 1564–1641

The Assayer 1623

“Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.”
(translation by: Stillman Drake. 1957. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 237f)

“I think that if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds. The latter, I believe, are nothing more than names when separated from living beings, just as tickling and titillation are nothing but names in the absence of such things as noses and armpits.”
(translation by: Stillman Drake. 1957. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 276f)

Qualities that really are part of the objects they are attributed to

Galileo:

• extension
• location
• mass
• motion
• shape
• size
• penetration
• touch
• number

Qualities that are not really part of the objects they are attributed to

Galileo:

• colors
• tastes
• odors
• sounds
• heat
• tickling, titillation

The “Corpo Sensitivo”

• corpo sensitive, corpo animato, corpo animato e sensitivo
• l’animale, l’animal vivente
• l’anima sensitiva

“Hence I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated. But since we have imposed upon them special names, distinct from those of the other and real qualities mentioned previously, we wish to believe that they really exist as actually different from those.”
(translation by: Stillman Drake (1957) Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 274)

“[…] vo io pensando che questi sapori, odori, colori, etc., per la parte del suggetto nel quale ci par che riseggano, non sieno altro che puri nomi, ma tengano solamente lor residenza nel corpo sensitivo, sì che rimosso l’animale, sieno levate ed annichilate tutte queste qualità; tuttavolta però che noi, sì come gli abbiamo imposti nomi particolari e differenti da quelli de gli altri primi e reali accidenti, volessimo credere ch’esse ancora fussero veramente e realmente da quelli diverse.”
(Galileo Galilei [1623] Il Saggiatore, p. 48)

“[…] I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on, on part of the subject in which they appear to reside, are no more than mere names, but that they hold their residency only in the sensitive body. Hence, if the animal were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated. Nevertheless, as soon as we in this way have imposed names on them, particular and different from those of the other primary and real accidents, we want to believe that they also exist just as truly and really as the latter.”

René Descartes 1596-1650

“[…] pain and color and so on are clearly and distinctly perceived when they are regarded merely as sensations or thoughts. But when they are judged to be real things existing outside our mind, there is no way of understanding what sort of things they are.”
(Descartes, René [1644] Principles of Philosophy, I, 68)

“The nature of body consists not in weight, hardness, color, or the like, but simply in extension.”
(Descartes, René [1644] Principles of Philosophy II, §4)

John Locke 1632-1704

(John Locke [1690] An Essay concerning Human Understanding, II, viii, 15)

The other side: Subjectivity

• parallel to the introduction of modern science, subjectivity became the focus of philosophy
• res cogitans contrasted with res extensa; introduced as a counterpart to the new picture of the world
  

  “Shall I say ‘a rational animal’? No; for then I should have to inquire what an animal is, what rationality is, and in this one question would lead me down the slope to other harder ones, and I do not have the time to waste on subtleties of this kind. Instead I propose to concentrate on what came into my thoughts spontaneously and quite naturally whenever I used to consider what I was.”
  (Descartes, René. 1641. Meditations, II)

  “je pense, donc je suis” (“I think, therefore I am”)
  (Descartes, René. 1637. Discours de la Méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, IV)

  “ego cogito, ergo sum“
  (Descartes, René. 1644. Principia philosophiæ, I, 10)

  • as a path to secure knowledge (and an anthropological characteristic) introduced shortly after the modern scientific-technological picture of the world
  • consciousness as a defining criterion of humans? Beasts are mere machines?
  • Husserl: step-by-step increase of symbolic presentation, step-by-step separation of conscious experience
  • look for: the relation of τεχνἠ and symbolic-mathematical

Edmund Husserl 1859–1938

• from mathematics to philosophy—founder of Phenomenology
• 1891 Philosophie der Arithmetik: Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen.—problem of the foundations of mathematics (Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik)—Gottob Frege: “Psychologism”
• 1900-1 Logische Untersuchungen—careful refutation of psychologism
• 1913  Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie.—“transcendental turn”
• 1931 Méditations cartésiennes—problem of cogito (German 1950: Cartesianische Meditationen: Eine Einleitung in die Phänomenologie)
• 1935 (1953) Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die Phänomenologische Philosophie.

Experience, intuition

• ‘experience’ translates two German words: Erfahrung vs. Erlebnis (Leben, body vs. Leib, Philosophy of Life)
• ‘intuition’ translates two German words: Intuition vs. Anschauung
• embodiment
• there is a typical and vague general empirical style of the whole world

Logical concepts, as valid thought-unities, must have their origin in intuition; they must arise out of an abstraction on the base of certain experiences, and must, when the abstraction is re-performed, always newly prove themselves and be recognized in their identity with themselves. Otherwise put: we absolutely do not want to rest content with ‘mere words,’ i.e. with a merely symbolic understanding of words. Meanings that are vitalized only from remote, confused, inauthentic intuitions—if by any intuitions at all—cannot be enough for us. We want to go back to the ‘things themselves.’ (Logical Investigations II, p. 7)

The distinction between qualities that are really part of the objects they are attributed to and those that are not

apparent a priori certainty that secondary qualities are produced by primary qualities:

• • primary qualities are the only real qualities of the world
  • appearances of secondary qualities are caused by real qualities

→ appearances of secondary qualities must be produced by primary qualities

“[…] I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on, on part of the subject in which they appear to reside, are no more than pure names, but that they hold their residency only in the sensitive body.” (Galileo, Il Saggiatore, p. 48)

Two popular accounts of qualities that are not really part of the objects they are attributed to

1. 1. error theory
      • secondary qualities are only by error attributed to the objects of the world

“[…] pain and color and so on are clearly and distinctly perceived when they are regarded merely as sensations or thoughts. But when they are judged to be real things existing outside our mind, there is no way of understanding what sort of things they are.” (Descartes, Principia Philosophiæ, I, §68)

“[…] the ideas of primary qualities of bodies, are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves; but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities, have no resemblance of them at all.” (Locke, Essay, II, viii, 15)

two variants of error theory: projectivism and eliminativism

1. 1. dispositionalism
      • secondary qualities are in the world: they are dispositions of objects to produce the respective sensations in us

“[…] we in no way likewise apprehend that in external objects, which we call light, color, smell, taste, sound, heat or cold, and the other tactile qualities, or that which we call their substantial forms, unless as the various dispositions of these objects which have the power of moving our nerves in various ways.” (Descartes, Principia Philosophiæ, IV, §198)

“Such qualities, which, in truth, are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i. e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c., these I call secondary qualities.” (Locke, Essay, II, viii, 10)

The paradox of the primary-secondary quality distinction

1. apparent a priori certainty that secondary qualities are produced by primary qualities
2. inconceivability of the connection:

“[W]e are wholly unable to conceive how the same things (viz., size, figure, and motion) can produce something else of a nature entirely different from themselves.” (Descartes, Principia Philosophiæ, IV, §198)

“[W]e can by no means conceive how any size, figure, or motion of any particles, can possibly produce in us the idea of any colour, taste, or sound whatsoever; there is no conceivable connexion between the one and the other.” (Locke, Essay, IV, iii, 13)

→ Husserl: “mysterious, insoluble incomprehensibilities” (Krisis, 3) in the modern picture of the world

→ calls 1. into question:

“[W]e cannot have an a priori insight that every change of specific qualities of intuited bodies which can be experienced, or is conceivable in every actual and possible experience, is causally dependent on occurrences in the abstract shape-stratum of the world, as it were that every such change has, so to speak, a counterpart in the realm of shapes in such a way that the respective total change in the whole plenum has its causal counterpart in the sphere of shape.
Put in this way, this conception might appear almost adventurous.” (cp. Crisis, p. 36)

Shapes and Fillings

1. ideal geometry is concerned with an “ideal praxis“: limit shapes
2. the “world” of limit shapes is created with the help of a technique, the “art of measurement“
3. plena, too, are part of the objective world; must be fitted in the mathematized concept of nature
4. direct mathematization of plena “in principle impossible”—no a priori knowledge of their relation to geometrical limit shapes
5. need of indirect mathematization (a posteriori)

The three steps of the “mathematization of nature”

1. the idea of an ideal world, and its application to nature
2. the approximation of ideal limit-objects
3. symbolic abstraction and the loss of intuitive meaning

1. The idea of an ideal world, and its application to nature

1. 1. Already the methodological rigor of Euclidean geometry provided an example for philosophy

“… with Euclidean geometry had grown up the highly impressive idea of a systematically coherent deductive theory, aimed at a most broadly and highly conceived ideal goal, resting on ‘axiomatic‘ fundamental concepts and principles, proceeding according to apodictic conclusions—a totality formed of pure rationality, a totality whose unconditioned truth is available to insight and which consists exclusively of unconditioned truths recognized through immediate and mediate insight.” (Krisis, 18)

1. Many attempts for a mathematical account of nature in ancient thought
   • Anaximander—numerical symmetry of nature
   • Pythagoras—arithmetical structure of reality
   • Democritus—atomic reality can be largely described mathematically, sensible qualities are mere appearances
   • Plato—ideal vs. sensible objects, mathematical form as the last root of empirical reality
2. Galileo’s “completely new idea of a mathematical natural science” (Krisis, 20)
   • empirical nature itself is a rational and infinite totality
   • science is universal and can completely master it
   • empirical nature itself is conceived of in terms of the Platonic concept of number
     1. in its inner structure intelligible with reason alone, independent of sensibility
     2. the appearances of sensible qualities are alleged to be confused ideas, so confused that the relation between them and their real causes is unintelligible

Plato’s Methexis

• ideal geometry can be applied to real objects because of methexis

Geometry and the picture of the world

Euclidean geometry:

1. systematically coherent deductive theory
2. directed at a most broadly and highly conceived ideal goal
3. rests on “axiomatic” fundamental concepts and principles
4. proceeds according to apodictic arguments
5. is a totality formed of pure rationality
6. which consists exclusively of unconditioned truths available to insight
7. limited to a “finitely closed a priori“
8. applied to astronomy
9. applied as a “means for technology“

Modern geometrical concept of the world

1. world is a rational infinite totality of being with a rational science systematically mastering it
2. a priori determination of all kinds of existence possible—world itself consists of ideal objects
3. geometry becomes part of algebra; numerical operations replace intuitive understanding (“arithmetization of geometry”)
4. nature is “mathematized”

2. The approximation of ideal limit-objects and the substruction of reality

1. the “art of measurement”: transforms really experienced objects into ideal mathematical objects
2. limit-objects approximated with arbitrary precision
3. “garb of ideas,” “substruction”

3. Detachment from original meaning in “technization”

1. 1. Original proximity of ancient mathematics to intuition — understanding. E.g. Pythagoras’ theorem visualized:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pythagoras-2a.gif)

1. “arithmetization of geometry” — mere formal understanding (In any right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs.)
2. operations proceed with a mere method/technology; no intuitive understanding required
3. loss of intelligibility of the connection between abstracted world and the world as it is experienced by us

Three ways of constituting concepts