Lecture
Verbeek- What things do
Phenomenology
Sense perception and subject as gateway to understand reality
Alternative to positivist sciences where focus is on object as knowable through
experiments by removing subject
The way reality is disclosed by humans from a relational ontology
Postphenomenology
Technological mediation including certain degree of agency
Beyond social constructivism and technological determinism
Operates from relational ontology but how technology mediates our existence
and perception of reality
Experience requires existence of a relation between experiencer and what is being
experienced, it supposes it as intentionality, experience as “experience of something”
We cannot just “see”, “hear” or “think”, but we will always see, hear or think
something. Similarly, the objects “in themselves” will probably exist, but it does not
make much sense to think about them, because as soon as we do that, they become
things for us, things as disclosed in our relations with them (Verbeek and
Rosenberger 2015: 11).
Technological intentionality
it is clear from Heidegger’s analysis that equipment has an “instrumental
intentionality”; a tool is “something in order to,” and in that “in order to” there is
always a reference of the tool to a use context, to whatever can be done with it
(132).’
By the concept of “intentionality” here Ihde means the directionality of the instrument
and not the intentional relation between human beings and world, to which the
phenomenological term usually refers.’ (124)
Two dimensions of experience
microperception= bodily dimension of sensory perception
macroperception = cultural context ‘in which sensory perception becomes
meaningful.’ (122)
hermeneutic dimension of artefacts
The hermeneutic dimension of mediation by artifacts should not only be
localized in microperception, but also is found in the macroperceptual
frameworks in which human beings find themselves. The ways in which
reality comes to be meaningful for human beings depend not only on their
sensory relations with it but also on the contexts in which meaning arises.”
(135)
Multistability: seeing an object from multiple perspectives (micro) based on the
particular use-context (macro)
Embodiment relation glasses, smartphone, artefacts only make senses in use
Hermeneutic relation thermometer, health app, artefacts require interpretation
Alterity relation music boxes, alexa influence reality
Background relation central heating systems, wifi, happen in the background
Verbeek- What things do
Phenomenology
Sense perception and subject as gateway to understand reality
Alternative to positivist sciences where focus is on object as knowable through
experiments by removing subject
The way reality is disclosed by humans from a relational ontology
Postphenomenology
Technological mediation including certain degree of agency
Beyond social constructivism and technological determinism
Operates from relational ontology but how technology mediates our existence
and perception of reality
Experience requires existence of a relation between experiencer and what is being
experienced, it supposes it as intentionality, experience as “experience of something”
We cannot just “see”, “hear” or “think”, but we will always see, hear or think
something. Similarly, the objects “in themselves” will probably exist, but it does not
make much sense to think about them, because as soon as we do that, they become
things for us, things as disclosed in our relations with them (Verbeek and
Rosenberger 2015: 11).
Technological intentionality
it is clear from Heidegger’s analysis that equipment has an “instrumental
intentionality”; a tool is “something in order to,” and in that “in order to” there is
always a reference of the tool to a use context, to whatever can be done with it
(132).’
By the concept of “intentionality” here Ihde means the directionality of the instrument
and not the intentional relation between human beings and world, to which the
phenomenological term usually refers.’ (124)
Two dimensions of experience
microperception= bodily dimension of sensory perception
macroperception = cultural context ‘in which sensory perception becomes
meaningful.’ (122)
hermeneutic dimension of artefacts
The hermeneutic dimension of mediation by artifacts should not only be
localized in microperception, but also is found in the macroperceptual
frameworks in which human beings find themselves. The ways in which
reality comes to be meaningful for human beings depend not only on their
sensory relations with it but also on the contexts in which meaning arises.”
(135)
Multistability: seeing an object from multiple perspectives (micro) based on the
particular use-context (macro)
Embodiment relation glasses, smartphone, artefacts only make senses in use
Hermeneutic relation thermometer, health app, artefacts require interpretation
Alterity relation music boxes, alexa influence reality
Background relation central heating systems, wifi, happen in the background
