Conference Agenda

In this presentation, I expand postphenomenology’s concept of technology-mediated intentionality, pioneered by Don Ihde, by engaging with G.W.F. Hegel’s concept of mutual recognition. Hegel’s social and political philosophy has gained increasing interest in the contemporary philosophy of technology, particularly for examining human relations with artificial intelligence and other automated technologies. Postphenomenology, in turn, is a well- established post-Heideggerian perspective that emphasizes the non-neutral agency of human- made artifacts in shaping experiences of the world and the self.

I demonstrate how both Ihde and Hegel are concerned with how “otherness” mediates humans’ subjective experiences. But while Ihde focuses on the non-human other (i.e., technical artifact), Hegel highlights the human other (i.e., self-consciousness).

For Ihde, my analysis centers on his interpretation of the Husserlian concept of intentionality and development of a variational methodology to analyze multistable visual phenomena in Experimental Phenomenology (1986). These contributions laid the groundwork for his later phenomenological descriptions of the mediating role of technical artifacts in Technics and Praxis (1979), Technology and the Lifeworld (1990), and other works.

For Hegel, I focus on his accounts of mutual recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and other posthumously published writings, with particular attention to the passage commonly known as the “master-slave” (or lord-bondsman) dialectic. Contrary to dominant interpretations of this passage, I argue that Hegel develops an early account of technology- mediated recognition through the slave’s activity of self-objectification (i.e., work) under coercion from the master. According to this original interpretation, self-consciousness ultimately evolves through the mediation of an opposing self-consciousness, but this experience is indispensably shaped by the jointly formed technical object.

I conclude my talk by addressing past critiques of postphenomenological research,

particularly its alleged inadequacy in engaging with the political and historical dimensions of human-technology relations. I argue that many of these critiques stem from the absence of an intersubjective foundation for examining the interplay between human intentionality and technological mediation. Efforts to establish such a foundation are currently being pursued by various researchers and perspectives. A Hegelian perspective on recognition could contribute to this endeavor by elucidating how human subjectivity is transformed through technologically mediated encounters with other humans.

There are several companies offering to produce a ‘digital twin’ of you: data is collected through interviews or questionnaires, which is, then, algorithmically collated into a digital version of your personality that can interact with others through text, voice, and/or video. While they are marketed as having multiple uses, the salient use is to provide a post-mortem ‘digital self’ with which others can interact. These personally-curated griefbots are the focus of this paper. In keeping with the conference theme, one could hardly consider a more intimate technology than an ‘algorithmic echo’ of one’s personality with which others interact in meaningful ways after one’s death.

This paper will examine personally-curated griefbots by considering Sartre’s understanding of death as presented in Being and Nothingness, a work that he calls “An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology.” Bringing Sartre’s ontology of the self into postphenomenological analyses provides another lens to examine certain technologies, particularly griefbots. Sartre’s ontology of the self, centered on freedom and facticity, emphasized how others fundamentally shape our being. Upon recognizing "the look" of another, I must acknowledge my own objectification – my freedom becomes alienated by “the other.” It is not just that I can never know what others truly think of me. That is certainly true whether one has read Sartre or not. For Sartre, what makes my objectifications by others so challenging to my freedom is that I cannot deny and must accept that my ‘being-for-others’ is a constitutive aspect of my being. This permanent alienation at the heart of my existence initiates a range of irremediable tensions in human relationships: from antagonistic negotiations (at best) to interminable conflict (at worst).

While living, my ‘being-for-others’ is an ontological dimension of my existence that, while alienating, can be transcended. Given the ontological structure of the self for Sartre, however, death marks the final and complete triumph of my being-for-others over my being-for-itself. In death, I become nothing more than an object for others to determine in their stories, memories, and beliefs about me. In short, upon death, my being is exhausted in my being-for-others, which is the ultimate and final alienation of my freedom.

Personally-curated griefbots appear to offer some control over one’s complete and total objectification in death. Using Sartre's understanding of death, this paper asks: Do these technologies create novel ways of anticipating and controlling one’s legacy and of grieving for others? Or rather, do they make explicit existing tensions in how we approach our own legacy and how we relate to the dead?

The hypothesis of this paper is that postphenomenology lacks an account of temporality, and hence is unable to analyze how technologies mediate human-world relations over time. Although there is some work on the relations between technologies, sedimentation, and habit formation, temporality is not thematized in itself. This talk shows how the work of Bernard Stiegler can form a starting-point for articulating the temporal dimension of human-technology relations. I will specifically focus on the temporal dimension of digital media: the network of technologies that enables the transmission of digital content (e.g., social media, mobile applications).

For Stiegler, technologies essentially are mnemotechnologies that are constitutive of memory. Digital media shape what Stiegler calls tertiary retentions: they give rise to particular ways of anticipation and perception. Focusing on this notion reveals the close connection between Stiegler and Husserl’s phenomenology of time consciousness, shows how Stiegler’s analysis of technics finds it basis in phenomenology, as well as clarifies its relevance for understanding the temporality of technics. In this talk, I suggest that Stiegler’s approach to the temporality of technics forms an important addition to postphenomenology for two reasons: (1) it enables to recognize that technological artefacts are often part of larger technological infrastructures that structure temporality, and (2) helps articulating why specific technological infrastructures might have undesirable consequences, for instance by pointing to what Stiegler has called the industrialization of memory.

The talk is structured as follows. First, I argue that the issue of temporality is typically neglected in postphenomenology and show why this is a problem. Second, I will outline the basics of Stiegler’s understanding of technics, particularly focusing on how he conceptualizes the relationship between technics and memory. Second, I show how he updates Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness through the introduction of the notion of tertiary retention. Third, I argue that, in updating Husserl in this way, Stiegler’s work enables for a phenomenological analysis of the temporality involved in contemporary digital media. Fourth, I show how Stiegler’s analysis can augment the postphenomenological approach to analyzing human-technology relations.