"It's refreshing that some strands of continental philosophy are
allowing room for non-human perspectives [in reference to the Object
Oriented Ontology Symposium at Georgia Tech and the OOO theory]
(enough with the solipsism already), but OOO seems to be throwing the
baby out with the bathwater. We absolutely need to navigate between
empirical and relativistic understanding, but I have found
transdisciplinary examinations of non-dual approaches to cognition to
be much more useful than philosophical speculations based on
linguistic games with the subject/object divide."
I wonder why theory has to be non-experiential. Developing perspective
and practice through experience rather and theory seems a bit stale.
During a time of immersive design and connectivity, theory needs a
good shot of Vitamine B12 (e.g., experience) in order to thrive. A
transdisciplinary approach, which I agree with, would include theory
as a conceptual+perceptual process. Including theory as such an
experiential vehicle turns the role of theory upside down.
"In short, we need to encourage *more* of a focus on and understanding
of relations and processes, not less, and in ways that are more
explicit and less philosophically esoteric.
I find this very true of works which focus on the future – how can we
see it, feel it, and know it if it is not here yet? How can
art/design bring an idea, which time has not arrived, into our current
time frame? I find this an pesty issue, especially with racial human
enhancement, nano-molecular manufacturing and strong AI, whcih have
thus far been explored through narrative and theory.
Therefore, we need to "experience" theory in action: not necessarily
the diminishment of philosophizing of theory, but the expanding the
engagement of being "inside" a theory. This is an important role for
artists.
"Which brings me back to Roger's call for how this informs art=science
praxis: When viewing Chris Jordan's photographs of albatross birds
that have died by consuming bottle caps in the Pacific Trash Gyre
(http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11), do you ask
yourself whether the bird and the bottlecaps are equal or how human
technologies might function more integrally with organic systems?"
The latter.
One question is how we might bring a more provocative and broader
exploration of interactions of organisms and oikos, while being truly
aware of the exponential growth of technology and the increasing rate
of impoverished and inadequate dissemination of knowledge.
Best,
Natasha
On May 7, 2010, at 3:12 AM, francesco monico wrote:
> David,
> Ingold's critical analysis of the term athropocentrism start from
> placing the human being at the hub of a 'dwelt-in world', the shift
> from anthropocentrism to anthropocircumferentialism is tantamount to
> the withdrawal of the human presence from the center to the periphery.
> Luhmann's assert that this "third person" perspective "marks the
> triumph of technology over cosmology.... technology provides the
> principles for human action upon the world". If we assume the
> anthropotechnic perspective proposed by Peter Sloterdjk we could see
> technology as a product of the humankind hitself, and as the
> humankind is part of the environment, therefore technology is a
> product of the environment. So there is a circular scheme of implosion
> (anthropocentrism) vs explosion (anthropocircunferentialism), both
> are part of the same movement.
>
> Ecological phenomenology could be seen in her pragmatical dimension
> as a call to enter into the sensorial
> present,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecophenomenology#cite_note-1>a
> call for retrieving a moral sense of nature. From this ethical point
> of view the question is to go through a moral shift, challenge the
> human-centered assumption that only utility to industrialized
> society can justify the existence of anything on the planet.
>
> Maybe the Ian Bogost idea of OOO, in some way comprehend what we
> are attempting to experiencing: "Object-oriented ontology ("OOO" for
> short) puts
> *things* at the center of this study. Its proponents contend that
> nothing has special status, but that everything exists
> equally-plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, sandstone, and Harry
> Potter, for example. In contemporary thought, things are usually
> taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific
> naturalism) or as constructions of human behavior and society
> (social relativism).
> OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
> all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering
> their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.
>
> fra
>
> 2010/5/5 david mcconville <id@elumenati.com>
>
>> Francesco et al,
>>
>> Perhaps this excerpt from Tim Ingold's essay "Globes and Spheres"
>> in The Perception of the Environment (2000, p. 218) can inform the
>> choice of words within this discussion:
>>
>> Since we are human, the world around us must necessarily be
>> anthropocentric: this, in itself, implies no lack of participation,
>> nor does it entail an instrumental attitude. Indeed it is decidedly
>> odd that the term 'anthropocentrism' should have been adopted to
>> denote an attitude that, more than any other, withdraws human life
>> from active participation in the environment. It is an attitude
>> that might be more accurately described as
>> 'anthropocircumferentialism'.
>> The term may be an impossibly cumbersome one; nevertheless I
>> believe we need it, if only to distinguish the discursive
>> construction of the environment characteristic of modern Western
>> thought and science from the many pre-modern and non-Western
>> cosmologies that are anthropocentric in the strict sense of placing
>> the human being at the hub of a dwelt-in world, a centre of
>> embodied awareness that reaches out, through the activity of the
>> senses, into its surroundings. Thus the shift from anthropocentrism
>> to anthropocircumferentialism is tantamount to the withdrawal of
>> the human presence from the center to the periphery of the
>> lifeworld. And ecocentrism, finally, is just the other side of the
>> coin from anthropocircumferentialism. For once humanity is placed
>> on the outside, surrounding the global environment,
then the environment - now surrounded rather than surrounding - no
longer holds any place for human beings.
>>
>> He also cites' Luhmann's assertion that this "third person"
>> perspective "marks the triumph of technology over cosmology," since
>> "traditional cosmology places the person at the centre of an
>> ordered universe of meaningful relations...Cosmology provides the
>> guiding principles for human action within the world, technology
>> provides the principles for human action upon it." This is
>> well-covered territory within eco-phenomenology, which is exploring
>> how our human-centrism can inform our ecological interactions
>> (instead of attempting to imagine that we can avoid it, as with
>> some of the current threads of
"object-oriented ontology").
>>
>> Roger - I have found that clarifying these perspectival
>> distinctions is quite important when working with scientific
>> (particularly geospatial and
>> cosmographical) datasets within artworks, as they are so frequently
>> used uncritically from the god's eye view.
>>
>> cheers,
>> david
>> ---
>>
>> david mcconville
>> director, noospheric research division http://www.elumenati.com
>>
>> On Apr 27, 2010, at 4:00 AM, francesco monico wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Natasha,
>>> I agree with you that we need an urgent meditation on human
>>> becoming multiple-selves.
>>>
>>> You said what is 'centrism', and you're right is very
>>> anthropo-centric, I would say colonialist on regard of otherness,
>>> but what is "centrism"? It
>> is
>>> a culturally driven outlook, a vanishing point through which we retrieved
>> a
>>> position in a realm without 'telos', the question is if today
>>> after the post-psychology, post-sociology, the idea of the ecology
>>> of the mind, centrism is still a valid position, or if we have to
>>> retrieve from the
>> past
>>> the polytheistic position in order to set our self in this new realm.
>>>
>>> For that reason there is a political issue on this discussion: "In a
>> world
>>> where religious dogma and political hegemony erupt a sense of
>>> unity, connectives, and peace - a focus on Eco-centrism could be a
>>> meaningful antidote." Well we could say a necessary antidote, and
>>> it seems to me
>> that
>>> we have to start from the animal kingdom reaching the P. Singer proposal
>> to
>>> extend the debate on Human Rights not only at all humankind but to
>>> all living beings.
>>>
>>> Your human enhancement engages immersivity, simulations, experience
>> design
>>> within the field of media arts and the areas of brain-share, and
>>> consciousness expansion, and brain emulation within the fields of
>> cognitive
>>> and neuroscience and the field of artificial intelligence. This will
>> reset
>>> the narcissism but also the basic 'libido' (psychic energy) and
>>> also the concept of Love. That you define "love" a strong
>>> positive emotion and pleasure, love as "well-being". Going
>>> directly into the idea of love you
>> got
>>> the point of the installations.
>>>
>>> Facing the monotheistic, ego driven vision of the realm, is
>>> everyday more urgent to became capable to open us to a plurality
>>> of worlds in which humankind is hosted, I would quote Roy Ascott:
>>>
>>> *Every fibre, every node, every server on the Net is a part of me. **It's
>> a
>>> phase space I'm in, a sort of tele-potentiality. As I interact with the
>> Net,
>>> I reconfigure myself. My net-extent defines me, just as my body defined
>> me
>>> in the old biological culture.I am weightless and dimensionless in any
>> exact
>>> sense. I am the reach of my connectivity.*
>>>
>>> As you wrote Natasha: Toward Plurality and Plasticity! That we can change
>> in
>>> Toward polytheistic and dynamic vision of the world.
>>>
>>> Facing the enhanced realm of the Net, we need to reconfigure ourselves,
>> from
>>> one side negotiating a new position in the Nature, extending the XV
>> century
>>> debate on native indios to animal and plants, from another side extending
>> in
>>> a radical way the P. Singer proposal, developing the technoetic
>>> starting building a cyber-ethic (is a fact that today's only
>>> living philosophy is
>> the
>>> ethic one)
>>>
>>> The question is if is correct the idea of the radicalisation of the
>> Singer
>>> proposal, we have to extend the human rights to nature and to
technology?
>>>
>>> francesco
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2010/4/26 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
>>>
>>>> I respond by placing Francesco's comments in quotes and my
>>>> response direclty below his comments:
>>>>
>>>> "The first topic introduced by you is a question on "what ways
>>>> can narcissism and anthropocentrism be applied to a post or trans
>>>> or meta human?", the idea of the artwork that inspires this
>>>> subject, *Is There
>> Love
>>>> in The Technoetic
>>>> Narcissus?* is clearly against the -centrism, not matter if is
>>>> anthropically or animally or technologically driven, from the
>>>> point of view of the humankind we have an urgence to shift from
>>>> ego-centrism to
>> *eco*-centrism.
>>>> This term is a good start."
>>>>
>>>> Agreed. It would be quite odd to have a single-self narcissism
>>>> when the future human is becoming multiple-selves. I view the
>>>> issues by framing
>> it
>>>> as "social ecology", and I think that your term "eco-centrism" is
>>>> in keeping with this sentiment. But what is "centrism"? It is a
>>>> political philosophical outlook which avoids extremism, and this
>>>> is a very good thing.
>>>> So good, in fact - that it warrants plenty of love.*
>>>>
>>>> In a world where religious dogma and political hegemony erupt a
>>>> sense of unity, connectives, and peace - a focus on eco-centrism
>>>> could be a meaningful antidote.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "The term was adopted in Italy by Wu Ming 1 a very well known writer
>> (one
>>>> of
>>>> a group named Wu Ming) in his latest book *New Italian Epic
>>>> *(Einaudi 2009).
>>>> The title is a definition to describe a body of literary works which
>> share
>>>> various stylistic characteristics, thematic constants and an
>>>> underlying allegorical nature. The last chapter is about the new
>>>> definition of
>>>> eco-centrism: humans are not necessary, we are exempedable: there
>>>> is an urgence to shift from ego-centric point of view to
>>>> eco-centric."
>>>>
>>>> "So the question is if a Human Enhancement is still a form of
>>>> hyper cultural narcisism? And if yet: is the telos of our
>>>> species? In this case we are fundamentally a narcisistic specie,
>>>> so it is not a neurosis but a fundamental routine of our gender?"
>>>>
>>>> This is a timely and important question, since we are existing in
>>>> the throws of enhancement and there is no turning back (no matter
>>>> how much Bill Joy
>> or
>>>> Bill McKibben rally around anti-technological advancements. My answer
>> to
>>>> your question is that "Human Enhancement" is beyond a form of
>>>> hyper cultural narcissism because narcissism, by its very nature,
>>>> suggests that a human
>> is
>>>> the center of love and that this love is better than and more
>>>> important than any other love. This cannot be scientifically
>>>> proven and it is not psychologically sound. In fact is
>>>> psychological unsound and resides in very close proximity to
>>>> sociopathic behavior. Thus, "Human Enhancement" must
>> be
>>>> located within a "second-order cybernetics" and must include the tenets
>> of
>>>> a
>>>> social ecology because human enhancement suggests a "connective
>>>> intelligence." It further requires, and I do mean "requires"
>>>> brain plasticity. One might ask "How does human enhancement
>>>> suggest a
>> connective
>>>> intelligence?" And my answer is that human enhancement engages
>>>> immersivity, simulations, experience design within the field of
>>>> media arts and the
>> areas
>>>> of brain-share, and consciousness expansion, and brain emulation within
>> the
>>>> fields of cognitive and neuroscience and the field of artificial
>>>> intelligence. The transdisciplinary of these fields hedge on the
>> element
>>>> of
>>>> "love" (a strong positive emotion and pleasure) and what I consider to
>> be
>>>> love as "well-being". Well-being is quintessential love because in
>> order
>>>> to
>>>> "love" one must not be in pain or anguish and the freedom of
>> physiological
>>>> pain or psychological anger equals a sense of love. (I can
>>>> explain this further, but I don't' want to get too far off
>>>> track). But to tie it in
>> to
>>>> your artworks, you will notice that with your plants are green, not
>> yellow,
>>>> which suggests they are healthy. When a blooming flower is at
>>>> its most "love" it is ripe and full of all the chemical
>>>> components of
well-being.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "We know the misunderstanding on evolution of species as something with
>> a
>>>> direction or a refinement, in order to really understand the work of
>> Darwin
>>>> we have to speak to differentiation by speciation (that not
>>>> include any given refinement);"
>>>>
>>>> Darwin focused on natural selection. Spencer focused on survival
>>>> of the fittest. It seems plausible that Darwin does have an
>>>> affinity with diversity and differentiation.
>>>>
>>>> "We have to consider the idea of *Chance and Necessity* (New York,
>> Alfred
>>>> A.
>>>> Knopf, 1971), a book of Jaques Monod in which the nobel prize retrieve
>> the
>>>> classic old Greek idea (Heraclitus) on the absence of an aim a
*telos*."
>>>>
>>>> Even if John Cage's chance pieces of musical performance were
>>>> actually based on chance, Cage still needed to have developed his
>>>> skills in order to perform. So, the necessity of having skill
>>>> allowed for his chance to be music and not noise. Further,
>>>> Cage's chance music was preformed with technology.
>>>>
>>>> "The Human Cultural Narcissism could seems a sort of principle that
>> recover
>>>> the Telos."
>>>>
>>>> Yes, understood.
>>>>
>>>> "So we can go directly to your (natasha) last question: *Nevertheless,
>> if
>>>> and when humans diversify further and into a distributed
>>>> cognition, what image will ego see when looking into a mirror?
>>>> This reflection could frighten us deeply or give us immeasurable
psychological relief.*"
>>>>
>>>> "Indeed a frightening image if we keep our monotheistic vision of
>>>> the realm, but not if we will be capable to open us to new vision
>>>> of the world were the world became a plurality of worlds in which
>>>> humankind is hosted"
>>>>
>>>> Yes, well said Francesco. Precisely.
>>>>
>>>> Toward Plurality and Plasticity!
>>>>
>>>> Natasha
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2010/4/21 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
>>>>
>>>>> Thank you Francesco for introducing this topic. There are many
>>>>> angles to look at and routes to take in setting on a trek
>>>>> through the richness of your material. I'd like to start with a
>>>>> first post, and more will follow:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In what ways can narcissism and anthropocentrism be applied to a
>>>>> human who is unleashing biology and engaging a bio-synthetic
>>>>> zone of
>> existence?
>>>>> Human
>>>>> enhancement projects have a goal and that is to take biology out
>>>>> of its fixed nature and turn it into a workable palate. Design
>>>>> labs such as H+ Lab, DIYbio and DIYgenomics encourage new theory
>>>>> and practice for those who want to be at the center of their own
>>>>> evolving
>>>> bio-synthetic
>>>> system.
>>>>>
>>>>> Do-it-yourself human enhancement domain has a certain
>>>>> familiarity. For example, the theory and practice of
>>>>> second-order cybernetics placed its formidable authors-Norbert
>>>>> Wiener, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, as a type of
>>>>> subjective elitism, in a claim that the observer must be
>>>>> included in the system in order for the system to exist. If the
>>>>> mind/brain is central, if not pivotal, to a cybernetic system,
>>>>> would this be the epitome of an anthropocentric,
>>>>> self-referential human-machine? Further, in that technology's
>>>>> tools are most often available to those who partake in
>>>>> highly-financed projects, such as the Biological Computer
>>>>> Laboratory at the University of Illinois (1958-1975), and the
>>>>> lab is referred to as the "Nerve" and its founder, Heinz von
>>>>> Foerster as its head, would that not ever so more characterize
>>>>> this milieu as
narcissistic at its best?
>>>>>
>>>>> Alternatively, designating one's experience of existence at the
>>>>> locus of one's future experiences makes sense. Who would know
>>>>> how you think and feel better than you?
>>>>>
>>>>> Nevertheless, if and when humans diversify further and into a
>>>>> distributed cognition, what image will ego see when looking into
>>>>> a mirror? This reflection could frighten us deeply or give us
>>>>> immeasurable psychological relief.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Natasha Vita-More
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> nec metuas nec optas
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