Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Technology: Tool Use, Forms of Life, Technique, and a Transcendental Argument

Coeckelbergh, Mark; Funk, Michael

doi:10.1007/s10746-017-9452-6

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Recently scholarship has begun to explicate the aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy especially his work of the role of language in relation to philosophy of technology. Coeckelbergh and Funk (2018) comment that Wittgenstein is not referred to by philosophers of technology and little attention has been paid to technology in his philosophy. They provide a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty exploring the relation between language use and technology use to construct a framework for a Wittgensteinian philosophy of technology that develops 'Wittgenstein's insights into the use of tools, technique, and performance'.…”

Section: Wittgenstein and Philosophy Of Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-scientism, technoscience and philosophy of technology: Wittgenstein and Lyotard

Peters

2019

Educational Philosophy and Theory

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The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is a delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.-Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969), Culture and Value, p. 56e Wittgenstein, anti-scientism and philosophy of science Jean-Francois Lyotard understood Wittgenstein's anti-scientism in the context of the Austrian counter-enlightenment tradition which was deeply suspicious of the grand claim that the scientific method is superior to all other means of learning or gaining knowledge. Wittgenstein's negative cultural outlook was conditioned by Spengler's (1926) The Decline of the West and a deep pessimism about what science could achieve and what it could not. It could not, for instance, give us moral direction or deal with ethics. Beale and Kidd (2017) suggest that Wittgenstein's anti-scientism 'sheds light upon and reveals connections between some of the central areas of his thinking' (p. 5). Wittgenstein held a negative attitude about the role of science in modern civilization and its overwhelming confidence that it can resolve all problems and that it is only a matter of time before it extends its frontiers to encompass the whole of life. Wittgenstein's anti-scientism that characterizes his view of modern civilization is the cultural outlook that connects with the broader issues of naturalism and empiricism. As Anna Boncompagni (2018) points out in a review of Beale and Kidd, scientism for Wittgenstein also carries the corollaries: … science has the right, if not the duty, to extend its dominion into any territory; the scientific method is 'the' method of inquiry par excellence; other disciplines, if they are to attain knowledge at all, ought to conform to the scientific method; any domain of human experience can and should be reduced to the natural, empirical domain of science, https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/wittgenstein-and-scientism/ Wittgenstein's anti-scientism conditions those that embrace his work in philosophy of science.

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Section: Wittgenstein and Philosophy Of Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-scientism, technoscience and philosophy of technology: Wittgenstein and Lyotard

Peters

2019

Educational Philosophy and Theory

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“…First, the world is a lot less disenchanted than Dreyfus and Kelly suppose. Consider for instance how much wonder there is in contemporary science and technology, and how romanticism and technologies are still entangled (Coeckelbergh 2017d). More generally, it is highly doubtful if we find ourselves in the nihilistic situation Dreyfus and Kelly describe.…”

Section: If Skilled Engagement and Craft Work Are Good What Does Thamentioning

confidence: 99%

Skillful coping with and through technologies

Coeckelbergh

2018

AI & Soc

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Dreyfus's work is widely known for its critique of artificial intelligence and still stands as an example of how to do excellent philosophical work that is at the same time relevant to contemporary technological and scientific developments. But for philosophers of technology, especially for those sympathetic to using Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein as sources of inspiration, it has much more to offer. This paper outlines Dreyfus's account of skillful coping and critically evaluates its potential for thinking about technology. First, it is argued that his account of skillful coping can be developed into a general view about handling technology which gives due attention to know-how/implicit knowledge and embodiment. Then a number of outstanding challenges are identified that are difficult to cope with if one remains entirely within the world of Dreyfus's writings. They concern (1) questions regarding other conceptualizations of technology and human-technology relations, (2) issues concerning how to conceptualize the social and the relation between skill, meaning, and practices, and (3) the question about the ethical and political implications of his view, including how virtue and skill are related. Acknowledging some known discussions about Dreyfus's work, but also drawing on other material and on the author's previous writings, the paper suggests that to address these challenges and develop the account of skillful coping into a wider scoped, Dreyfusinspired philosophy of technology, it could take more distance from Heidegger's conceptions of technology and benefit from (more) engagement with work in postphenomenology (Ihde), pragmatism (Dewey), the later Wittgenstein, and virtue ethics.

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“…We conceive of practices, such as kongping and fanhei , as language practices that mix speech acts and the technically oriented manipulation of digital platforms. We draw on the Wittgensteinian notion of a language game and its relevance for present-day technological practices (Coeckelbergh, 2018; Coeckelbergh and Funk, 2018), highlighting that the language and discourses of participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use as “games.” Based on Coeckelbergh (2018) and our interpretation of Wittgenstein in an online context, we also highlight that the depth grammars (the presets for meaningful expression using words, texts, codes, algorithms, and other digital tools) of these techno-communicative acts conducted in the form of games produce cultures and “forms of life” (Coeckelbergh and Funk, 2018)—the particular ways that Chinese idol fans behave on social media platforms. Our conceptualization combines technology and cultural use in the analysis of Internet language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

Yin

Xie

2021

New Media & Society

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This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.

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Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Technology: Tool Use, Forms of Life, Technique, and a Transcendental Argument

Cited by 16 publications

References 19 publications

Anti-scientism, technoscience and philosophy of technology: Wittgenstein and Lyotard

Anti-scientism, technoscience and philosophy of technology: Wittgenstein and Lyotard

Skillful coping with and through technologies

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

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