Conference Agenda

Building on the postphenomenological framework of human-technology relations and posthuman (e.g. Barad; Braidotti; Haraway) theories of the subject, this paper develops a comprehensive approach to AI literacy that moves beyond traditional digital or media literacy frameworks. While existing approaches to AI literacy often focus primarily on technical understanding or critical analysis of AI systems, I argue that we need a more fundamental reconceptualization of how AI mediates and co-constitutes human subjectivity through what I term "intrasubjective mediation."

Drawing from my previous work on the intrasubjective mediating framework, which identifies six key groups of relations (technological, sociocultural, mind, body, space, and time) that constitute the human subject, I demonstrate how this framework can be specifically applied to human-AI relations. The framework reveals how AI systems do not simply mediate our relationship with the world in instrumental ways, but rather transform our very mode of being through complex interrelations across multiple dimensions of experience.

I argue that this approach to AI literacy requires understanding these transformative effects at both microperceptual and macroperceptual levels. At the micro level, we must attend to how specific AI interactions shape our embodied experience, cognitive processes, and behavioral patterns. At the macro level, we need to examine how AI systems are embedded within broader sociocultural contexts and power relations that influence their development and impact.

This paper demonstrates how a posthuman and postphenomenological approach to AI literacy can help by situating AI relations within a complex ecosystem of human becoming rather than treating them in isolation. Also, it acknowledges both the enabling and constraining aspects of human-AI relations without falling into either technological determinism or naive instrumentalism. By fostering critical awareness of how AI shapes human subjectivity across these multiple dimensions, we can have a chance to increase our agency in strategically engaging with AI systems as part of our technological becoming. My goal is to develop a more nuanced understanding of our complex co-evolution with AI technologies.

Modern advanced industrial technologies, particularly AI, present crucial challenges to the philosophy of technology, as evidenced by ethical and political proposals. AI stands at the center of the ‘Intimate Technological Revolution,’ fundamentally transforming our daily experiences and relationships while raising concerns about ethics and politics, as well as technoableism (Shew and Earle 2024). Postphenomenology, a contemporary philosophy based on pragmatism that explores human-technology relations through the key concept of multistability (Bosschaert and Blok 2023; Ritter 2021; 2024; Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015), has gained external attention as a framework for ‘empirically’ examining modern technologies. However, critics (Coeckelbergh 2022; Dmytro Mykhailov and Nicola Liberati 2023; Lemmens 2022; Pavanini 2022; Smith 2015; Zwier, Blok, and Lemmens 2016) argue that it can only address ‘small things’ rather than broader technological issues—a limitation particularly evident in its approach to AI ethics—leading to various attempts of expansion to confront ‘big thing’ (Bosschaert and Blok 2023; Claassen 2024; Coeckelbergh 2022; Ritter 2024; Romele 2021; Rosenberger 2023; Schürkmann and Anders 2024; Van Den Eede 2022; Wellner 2022).

I propose extending postphenomenology through Bergson's theory of time. Bergson, known for his significant influence on process philosophy that is sometimes contrasted with postphenomenology, provides valuable insights into temporal aspects of technological experience. Following Bergson's temporal theory that puts emphasis on aspect rather than tense, Hirai (2019) distinguishes between ‘process’ (present becoming, imperfective) and ‘event’ (past being, perfective). Through this distinction, we can identify a limitation of current postphenomenology: it handles ‘event’ only and statically describes them from a third-person view in a temporal exterior. By contrast, the appropriation of new technology occurs through a dynamic ‘process’ and can only be described from a first-person view in a temporal interior. The significance of distinguishing between ‘event’ and ‘process’ becomes particularly apparent in disability contexts where the temporal aspect of technological integration is often overlooked.

In engineering and industry, disabled people are typically viewed as persons requiring additional support from non-disabled people. Consequently, only non-disabled people participate in the process of making technology while considering possibilities and risks, with disabled people gaining access only after the transition to events and stabilization. However, significant disparities often exist between non-disabled people’s assumptions regarding the lived reality of disabled people (Shew and Earle 2024). Moreover, ‘hacks’—finding new meanings in things through creative appropriation—occur regularly in disabled people's everyday lives. Since these hacks represent discovering stabilities different from the designer-intended dominant stability, disabled people's participation in the process stage is essential for meaningful technological development.

Our research focuses on the technological possibilities for people who have engaged in artistic expressions such as painting, theater, and dance to continue their activities despite age-related or illness-induced physical changes. We formed teams comprising disabled people, care staff, technologists, and artists to explore these possibilities collaboratively. As part of this project, we conducted workshops using tone-morphing AI (Neutone, Inc., n.d.). While developers deemed this AI a studio tool for music makers creating new sound materials, our workshop process revealed shifts in stability: 1) a device for transforming everyday sounds into novel ones, 2) a medium that cultivates intentionality toward various sounds embedded in the lifeworld. Moreover, participants experienced well-being from their respective viewpoints within this process, discovering new modes of artistic expression through technological mediation. Based on this case study, I propose the concept of ‘temporal multistability,’ which extends postphenomenology as an analytical framework for human-technology relations occurring in dynamic temporal aspects.

References

Bosschaert, Mariska Thalitha, and Vincent Blok. 2023. “The ‘Empirical’ in the Empirical Turn: A Critical Analysis.” Foundations of Science 28 (2): 783–804. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-022-09840-6.

Claassen, Kristy. 2024. “There Is No ‘I’ in Postphenomenology.” Human Studies 47 (4): 749–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-024-09727-4.

Coeckelbergh, Mark. 2022. “Earth, Technology, Language: A Contribution to Holistic and Transcendental Revisions After the Artifactual Turn.” Foundations of Science 27 (1): 259–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09730-9.

Dmytro Mykhailov and Nicola Liberati. 2023. “Back to the Technologies Themselves: Phenomenological Turn within Postphenomenology.” https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09905-2.

Hirai, Yasushi. 2019. “Event and Mind: An Expanded Bergsonian Perspective.” In Understanding Digital Events: Bergson, Whitehead, and the Experience of the Digital, edited by David Kreps, 45–58. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429032066-4.

Lemmens, Pieter. 2022. “Thinking Technology Big Again. Reconsidering the Question of the Transcendental and ‘Technology with a Capital T’ in the Light of the Anthropocene.” Foundations of Science 27 (1): 171–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09732-7.

Neutone, Inc. n.d. “Neutone.” Accessed January 4, 2025. https://neutone.ai/.

Pavanini, Marco. 2022. “Multistability and Derrida’s Différance: Investigating the Relations Between Postphenomenology and Stiegler’s General Organology.” Philosophy & Technology 35 (1): 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00501-x.

Ritter, Martin. 2021. “Postphenomenological Method and Technological Things Themselves.” Human Studies 44 (4): 581–93. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-021-09603-5.

———. 2024. “Technological Mediation without Empirical Borders.” In Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology, edited by Bas de Boer and Jochem Zwier, 121–42. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0421.05.

Romele, Alberto. 2021. “Technological Capital: Bourdieu, Postphenomenology, and the Philosophy of Technology Beyond the Empirical Turn.” Philosophy & Technology 34 (3): 483–505. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-020-00398-4.

Rosenberger, Robert. 2023. “On Variational Cross-Examination: A Method for Postphenomenological Multistability.” AI & SOCIETY 38 (6): 2229–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01050-7.

Rosenberger, Robert, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. 2015. “A Field Guide to Postphenomenology.” In Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human–Technology Relations, 9–41. London: Lexington Books.

Schürkmann, Christiane, and Lisa Anders. 2024. “Postphenomenology Unchained: Rethinking Human-Technology-World Relations as Enroulement.” Human Studies, July. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-024-09746-1.

Shew, Ashley, and Joshua Earle. 2024. “Cyborg-Technology Relations.” Journal of Human-Technology Relations 2 (1). https://doi.org/10.59490/jhtr.2024.2.7073.

Smith, Dominic. 2015. “Rewriting the Constitution: A Critique of ‘Postphenomenology.’” Philosophy & Technology 28 (4): 533–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-014-0175-6.

Van Den Eede, Yoni. 2022. “Thing-Transcendentality: Navigating the Interval of ‘Technology’ and ‘Technology.’” Foundations of Science 27 (1): 225–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09749-y.

Wellner, Galit. 2022. “Digital Imagination, Fantasy, AI Art.” Foundations of Science 27 (4): 1445–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09747-0.

Zwier, Jochem, Vincent Blok, and Pieter Lemmens. 2016. “Phenomenology and the Empirical Turn: A Phenomenological Analysis of Postphenomenology.” Philosophy & Technology 29 (4): 313–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-016-0221-7.

Within the postphenomenological tradition, a great deal of work on the theory of technological mediation has been directly relevant to the Aristotelian virtue of phronesis, commonly translated to practical wisdom (Ihde 1979, Verbeek 2011, Kudina 2023). Existing mediation accounts of perception, praxis, ethics, and value formation readily map onto core elements of phronesis, allowing for a full technological mediation account of practical wisdom to be developed. Even though a great deal of work within the field maps onto phronesis, one fundamental aspect has not been accounted for: the technological mediation of practical deliberation.

In line with my wider project of forming a technological mediation account of phronesis, I argue that the intellectual virtue of euboulia, i.e. good practical deliberation on how to actualize a flourishing life, is a technologically mediated capacity that is co-constituted by the human-technology relationship. How we reason about the means towards actualizing good ends and acting upon those reasons cannot be fully understood as the radically individualistic rational capacity of a detached deliberator: our ability to practically reason is shaped and made possible through our relationships with deliberative technologies. I will consider two traditional examples of deliberative technologies and their modern iterations, journaling and the public forum, as paradigm cases of technologically mediated deliberation, before turning to consider the emerging technology of generative AI in decision-making contexts and its potential for deleterious effects on practical dilberation. Using these illustrative cases, a technological mediation account for practical deliberation can be established and complete a holistic mediation theory of phronesis.

After giving this descriptive account of a technologically mediated phronesis grounded in real-world technological examples, I will consider the normative implications of practical wisdom being co-constituted by technological artifacts and how both virtue ethics and postphenomenology can benefit from a mediation theory of phronesis. Since phronesis is a virtue essential for the fulfillment of a flourishing life, it stands to reason that we should have an understanding of how new and emerging deliberative technologies affect the quality and expression of our practical wisdom. There arises a moral imperative for designers, policy makers, and even the users of technology to consider how deliberative technology mediates practical wisdom and how we might promote the development of phronesis with our relationships to these technologies. If we have an interest in the development of euboulia that is essential for phronesis, we must have an understanding of how our relationships with technology shape that virtue.