Society for Philosophy of Technology (SPT)

The volume Feedback Loops is ostensibly a collection of essays exploring the work of Joseph C. Pitt, using his ideas about feedback loops in science, pragmatism about technology, and technological knowledge. But a synthetic reading of this volume reveals that its chapters form an argument about the significance of philosophy of technology. As suggested in the book’s Preface, the volume shows how philosophy of technology can serve as a “hyperspace transmogrifier.” Philosophy of technology has the capacity to simultaneously bring disparate elements into close contact and radically reframe, if not transform, those elements. Philosophy of technology thus opens new possibilities for reconstructing, reordering, and revaluing a myriad of issues we might consider. This presentation makes good on this suggestion. We begin by briefly explaining the metaphor of a hyperspace transmogrifier and then turn to showing how the chapters of the volume demonstrate this property of philosophy of technology (and how to harness this power). By following the role of philosophy of technology through diverse topics like supercomputing, engineering, the history of philosophy, and scientific instruments, we demonstrate the capacity of this peculiar discourse to transmogrify all that it encounters.

Scientific research is highly dependent on instruments to observe scientific objects. For example, astronomy relies on telescopic observations, and the rise of cognitive neuroscience in the past decades heavily depended on the use of brain imaging technologies. In this presentation, I outline an approach, based on my recent monograph, to studying how technologies shape scientific research and help constituting new scientific objects. I will specifically focus on how the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the neurosciences gives rise to a particular understanding of human cognition.
The presentation proceeds in three steps. First, I draw from the work of Gaston Bachelard to argue that scientific objects emerge in what he calls a “phenomenotechnique”: the interrelation between scientific theories, experimental set-ups, and the involved scientific instruments. Second, I suggest that scientific instruments are not neutral intermediaries allowing access to previously invisible parts of reality or serve to realize pre-existing goals, but instead mediate the relation between scientists and their objects of study. The idea of mediation entails that technologies (such as scientific instruments) shape the reality that scientists investigate, as well as the interpretational frameworks used to interpret it. Third, I illustrate my approach with a case study in the cognitive neurosciences, and show how TMS gives rise to a specific understanding of the scientific object ‘visual attention’.

“Postphenomenology,” a theoretical perceptive within the philosophy of technology, has developed a blossoming line of research on the topic of scientific imaging. This perspective specializes in the deep description of user relationships with technology, including the embodied habits of perception and the co-constitutive roles of artifactual materiality. An interdisciplinary group of scholars (including Don Ihde, founder of the postphenomenological perspective) have applied these ideas to the study of image interpretation and their related philosophical problems for more than two decades. In this paper, we reflect on postphenomenology’s contributions to the philosophy of science and technology, and present on how we have recently put these ways of thinking to use in our own case studies. Such case studies include satellite imaging of Earth and Mars, and sample preparation in neurobiology. Our reflections are built, in part, on our work co-editing and writing for our forthcoming book Postphenomenology and Imaging: How to Read Technology.